If you are a pirate VPN is an essential tool. I am trying to ascertain the popularity of various VPNs in piracy community. In this excerise, I will list several Popular VPNs in the comment if you use one of them just upvote that comment and reply the reason. If you don’t find your VPN listed add a comment with just their name. Reply the reason to it. This make it easier to understand the real life user cases.
P.S: I am only looking for paid VPNs please don’t mention “free vpn”.
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Mullvad because they don’t need your name, and you can pay by cash anonymously.
They also regularly have independent security audits
and their servers run everything on RAM meaning the second it loses power all data is lost.Do they still not have port forwarding?
Check out AirVPN if you want port forwarding.
Mullvad because https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/
Currently proton its decent though I’m thinking of moving to mullvad even though they’ve removed portforwarding.
I’ve used both and much prefer Proton for sailing the seas. Connecting through France (highest speed + p2p) with port forwarding is the best torrent speed I’ve had on a VPN. The only slight annoyance is it switching the forwarded port every time it reconnects, but I run it 24/7 anyway.
Just skip the “official” client and run it through gluetun. It’s a much better experience.
I did this and found it worked way better in terms of stability. Bonus is that Mullvad has a proper Linux client whereas Proton’s is just a cobbled-together mess that’s not worth using and is no where close to feature parity with the Windows client
And in the case that your Linux distro doesn’t have a client in their repos, you can very easily use Mullvad with wireguard in the terminal.
you can very easily use Mullvad with wireguard in the terminal
To be fair, same with Proton. OpenVPN and WireGuard configurations are available.
Mullavad
I used Mullvad, found them great for everything and would be my only VPN if they were big enough to facilitate streaming via other countries. Due to smaller number of servers it isn’t possible to use a lot of streaming services with them…I found this out when o/s and needing to VPN into my home country to access my geo-locked streaming service.
AirVPN because of port forwarding.
What do you use it for?
The port forwarding? It makes torrenting work better.
Interesting, I haven’t experienced anything like this with regards to torrent failures. I don’t entirely follow what failure means in this context though. I have torrents that have never completed due to lack of seeds and peers. I don’t think I’ve had a torrent fail in thousands over the last few years (data based on my current NAS box, but was true prior to that too)
The link above explains it better than I can, but without port forwarding it’ll still work, but it works better with an open port.
Yeah but the reason to do it is stated as:
If you are OK with your downloads failing in 10% of cases then continue as usual.
Unless I’m missing something, there’s no point in me pursuing it as I don’t have the problem described, because my Torrents aren’t failing.
I have torrents that have never completed due to lack of seeds and peers.
That’s what failing means here. You know how you sometimes see a torrent site list a non-zero number of seeders but when you try to download it, you don’t connect to any of them and it shows 0 seeders in your client? That’s what happens when neither you nor the seeders have port forwarding set up.
Proton VPN
Same. Since I am a paying Protonmail user I’ve switched to the Proton VPN. It has been fine.
I see that Proton allows payment via PayPal. Is it possible to pay via PayPal anonymously? I don’t use PP much at all so IDK.
I’d be shocked if it were, as I think they zealously honor KYC/AML/OFAC.
AirVPN, limited on details for signing up, can pay in crypto and easy port forwarding.
Good config generator as well
So… at the risk of humiliating myself,
I’ve never once used a VPN in my entire life.I pirated games, movies, shows, music, software… and the worst thing that happened to me was getting a letter from Telus once or twice saying “Hey. Don’t do that.”
That was 5 years ago
I know it’s bad practice. But is a VPN 100% necessary? Even a free one?
That’s because you’re in Canada. We don’t need to worry like Americans can. It’s not really necessary for us.
I think of it like having sex with or without a condom. If you don’t use a condom, there’s a chance to get an STD (or get “caught”). It’s not a guarantee to get caught, your IP address needs to end up in the pool of addresses they collect to send out DMCA notices so it won’t happen every time. But having a “condom” (VPN) reduces your chances by nearly 100%, assuming it’s properly setup which usually is a very simple process
I’ve only gotten two strikes in my life, 7-8yrs ago. And I feel like this was because my brother was downloading then recent, popular movies (which I almost never do). But before that, never did, without a VPN, and I used to pirate a lot more. Even further back, used to have a roommate who would go on movie and show torrenting sprees. We never got strikes. And that was when commercial VPNs weren’t really a thing yet, but copyright strikes were well known. I’ve known others who’ve never gotten strikes either.
So I’d say no, not 100% necessary at all. But it’s free or cheap enough to mitigate the risk. So that’s why I use one when I do pirate, which is rare these days.
Same here. Started with IRC, then private trackers. Always force encryption. Zero issues. VPN is a waste of money for piracy.
I use PIA because it was the cheapest on their 3.3 year plan, and it has a good node geographically close to me with port forwarding. I only use it for torrenting, so I don’t care if it’s a CIA Honeypot or whatever.
Currently testing Windscribe because they had good offer for a yearly subscription and some interesting features like ad block (mostly useful for mobile). Their privacy level is sufficient for what I’m doing currently, but if I ever need I’ll just Mullvad.
Proton VPN since it’s cheaper than ExpressVPN but apparently faster than other paid VPN options, while also having port forwarding to improve torrent connectivity.
I use IVPN and I’m very happy with them. They allow you to make an account without giving out your Email address, you just get a random-generated Account ID (Mullvad does the same btw). They also allow you to pay with Monero, an anonymous crypto currency. I used Mullvad before, Proton VPN and AirVPN are great options as well.
IVPN Looks really good, does it have port forwarding so you can torrent with it?
They recently removed it, I recommend AirVPN if you need port forwarding.
Mulllvad VPN on my Hardened Void Linux and GrapheneOS mainly to hide my real IP address plus I use NextDNS paid version too.
Proton because I have their Unlimited plan.
ProtonVpn
