He was downloading some TV shows. Our ISP sent 34 emails within one hour to warn about the illegal download. I showed the messages to him. He said that it was his first time so he would stop. But what of the consequence? Should I contact our ISP about this? [Reply]
you dont need a VPN if youre casually bit torrenting a few things (even a few new movies a week) , as long as you delete them immediately when your download is done, and youre not seeding...
you have no room to speak of 'terrible advice'
if you dont know how not to seed , or cant learn how in 5 minutes...you should not be bit torrenting or using a vpn
come on man...shut your mouth about horrible advice before you splurt out diarrhea just to sound cool
just limit outgoing connections to 1 or 2, lower outgoing bandwidth to almost zero, and remove any completed file...as soon as file is complete , do not seed
you dont need a VPN, now THAT is horrible advice..LOL buy your son a VPN...how many kids you got bro?
Your solution to breaking the law on that kind of scale isnt to cut back a little or stop doing illegal shit? Its "buy your son a VPN and let him go to town"?
come on man... THATs not horrible advice?
just try using your client properly for a week or two and you will get no more letters
Meh. I told Msmith that the safest way to download is with a VPN. That is unquestionably true. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Msmith:
He was downloading some TV shows. Our ISP sent 34 emails within one hour to warn about the illegal download. I showed the messages to him. He said that it was his first time so he would stop. But what of the consequence? Should I contact our ISP about this?
As you've seen in this thread, there are people who think a VPN is unnecessary. Ultimately it's up to you to decide which way to go. The following post on Reddit addresses the question of whether or not you should use a VPN:
All I download is movies and tv shows throughout the week via pirate bay and utorrent. I haven't thought much about using a VPN or beefing up any security since I haven't ever received a notice from my isp (big C), so inform me, please, why I would honestly need a vpn...
Some of the top answers:
Originally Posted by :
So, I was in your shoes. I had/have torrented or downloaded illegally since I was in the 8th grade (approx 15 years ago). I never once got a DMCA from any of the internet providers that I had.
That all changed this year when I cancelled my Directv subscription and decided to get the last couple of episodes of Games of Thrones off of torrents. I also grabbed Real Time with Bill Maher as I like that show as well. Big mistake doing so without a VPN.
You see, a good amount of the companies have given up on sending DMCA notices, but HBO has not. Within the span of the last two weeks of the Game of Thrones season, I was hit with 6 DMCA notices from various HBO programs, including Games and Real Time.
It also would seem that some porn companies are still sending out DMCAs as well. I didn't even realize I was getting DMCAs cause I log into my Comshit account just to pay the bill. I don't use their shitty email, but I checked it out of the blue and saw 7 or 8 of these notices in my Comcast inbox.
After I paid my bill, I came here and found this Private Internet Access discount link, used it, paid my 30 or so dollars for a year's subscription and haven't had a DMCA since.
As far as the torrent swarms are concerned, all of my traffic is coming out of the Netherlands whenever I download now.
So, this was kind of long winded, but here's the breakdown. Can you see yourself continuing to download without a VPN and have these scummy DMCA lawyers know that you are you and could possibly take you to court for damages? Or, would you rather pay 30 dollars for a year's worth of security and privacy and not have to worry about getting your internet shut off because you loaded up your torrenting program with 10 downloads before bed, wake up and they are all seeding and you are nailed with DMCAs?
This is just my story, which sounded similar to yours, so I decided to share. The choice you make is ultimately up to you, but I would highly recommend PIA.
edit: Once you get the VPN, make sure you google and grab the CheckMyTorrentIP.png torrent. It is basically just an empty file that will never stop "downloading", just keep it always in your torrent program. It's announce in your torrent program will tell you your current IP. You can check your IP with the VPN turned off in the announce for this file, turn on your little PIA green guy, pause and restart the .png and your should see your IP change to whatever region you have picked to have your traffic to come out of. It's a nice, quick, easy way to make sure your ass is covered before you load up a download sesh.
Originally Posted by :
The 6 dollars you pay for a month for safety definitely outweighs the cost of you getting caught. There is not need for the risk if you can easily avert it. It's like finishing in a girl and knowing she's not on birth control. The condom would have saved you thousands.
Originally Posted by :
Because you're playing roulette with 5 bullets chambered.
Originally Posted by :
I had gotten away with it for years without a VPN until that one fateful day where a certain company didn't like a certain thing I downloaded so my certain cable provider shut off my internet until I got it resolved.
Use a VPN. I pay ~$6 a month for peace of mind, added benefits of security, and as a plus I can view Europe's Netflix lineup which is quite different if not better than America's.
Originally Posted by :
I hate this question. Do you need a condom? No, but it keeps you out of trouble. Do you need a VPN? Same thing. If you're a daredevil and you like going in bare, then not having a VPN shouldn't bother you. You're just at a higher risk.
Originally Posted by :
Basically the whole condom analogy is exactly why you should use a VPN, although be warned not all VPN companies are created equally. You have to make sure the service you pay for does no log information which keeps them from being able to rat you out. Cryptostorm for example does not log. Happy hunting!
The guy who made the comment below has obviously interacted with Pawnmower (or someone just like him).
Originally Posted by :
I've seen tough guys like you online before. Fearless, unafraid of the copyright police. But when they get caught, they become quivering weasels. They end up having to be fugitives, on the run for the rest of their lives, looking over their shoulders, waiting for the tap on the back and the prison life. Why not just pay $40 for a year of VPN, and give yourself some protection? Forget about a reason why you should, and come up with a reason why you shouldn't, when it's safer and cheap. No brainer there.
Originally Posted by cooper barrett:
Smells better now as Hamster's dirty Panties moved. I used to take a route south through there, but question Moneximo?
Its just a nickname for Monett, the Mexican population is extremely/unusually high for a small midwestern town. [Reply]
you dont need a VPN if youre casually bit torrenting a few things (even a few new movies a week) , as long as you delete them immediately when your download is done, and youre not seeding...
you have no room to speak of 'terrible advice'
if you dont know how not to seed , or cant learn how in 5 minutes...you should not be bit torrenting or using a vpn
come on man...shut your mouth about horrible advice before you splurt out diarrhea just to sound cool
just limit outgoing connections to 1 or 2, lower outgoing bandwidth to almost zero, and remove any completed file...as soon as file is complete , do not seed
you dont need a VPN, now THAT is horrible advice..LOL buy your son a VPN...how many kids you got bro?
Your solution to breaking the law on that kind of scale isnt to cut back a little or stop doing illegal shit? Its "buy your son a VPN and let him go to town"?
come on man... THATs not horrible advice?
just try using your client properly for a week or two and you will get no more letters
You are serving while you're in the middle of your download. Your advice is good for minimizing risk, but it doesn't eliminate it to the extent that a VPN does. [Reply]
Originally Posted by suzzer99:
Good news is he's like one click away from snuff porn.
I'm assuming anyway. When I used to download songs on emule every now and then I would see a video pop up from one of my search terms. Oh what's this? Kiddie porn. Awesome! Should I just turn myself in now or wait for the feds to find me?
What search terms were you using, you sick fuck?
j/k I don't want to know about the terms, you sick fuck.
VPNs are for noobs. You're wasting your bandwidth by porting it who knows where through that VPN pipe. Newsgroups and torrent aggregators are where it's at. Take advantage of that download speed you're paying for, and don't limit it to the VPN throughput. [Reply]
Originally Posted by stumppy:
I hadn't heard 'Monexico' before but it's an accurate description from what I've heard.
Pretty much the entire town is factories, guessing that's why...probably shipping them in for cheap labor. That's also why it stinks so bad. (the factories, not the Mexicans) :-) [Reply]
Originally Posted by patteeu:
You are serving while you're in the middle of your download. Your advice is good for minimizing risk, but it doesn't eliminate it to the extent that a VPN does.
Before Pawnmower unleashes another diatribe intended to show us how much smarter he is than anyone else, I'll just quickly mention that the utorrent client gives you the option of setting the number of concurrent uploads to zero, so it is possible to prevent that. However, the rest of your statement is 100% true.
Anyone who is just fine with picking up crack whores and screwing them without a condom would also be just fine with downloading without a VPN. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Fish:
VPNs are for noobs. You're wasting your bandwidth by porting it who knows where through that VPN pipe. Newsgroups and torrent aggregators are where it's at. Take advantage of that download speed you're paying for, and don't limit it to the VPN throughput.
Up until a couple years ago I'd agree 100%. But Usenet providers are pulling stuff so fast now due to DMCA requests that its getting more difficult than its worth...especially HBO stuff. I still use it, but I save my blocks for hard to find stuff that I cant find on bittorrent. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Fish:
VPNs are for noobs. You're wasting your bandwidth by porting it who knows where through that VPN pipe.
I respectfully disagree. The bandwidth I get with my VPN pipe (usually around 50-60 Mbps) is acceptable to me for my purposes.
Originally Posted by Fish:
Newsgroups and torrent aggregators are where it's at. Take advantage of that download speed you're paying for, and don't limit it to the VPN throughput.
That may very well be. But it's hard to beat the simplicity and the safety of installing the utorrent client and just going to Pirate Bay for everything. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Lex Luthor:
I respectfully disagree. The bandwidth I get with my VPN pipe (usually around 50-60 Mbps) is acceptable to me for my purposes.
That may very well be. But it's hard to beat the simplicity and the safety of installing the utorrent client and just going to Pirate Bay for everything.
The very nature of how VPNs work make them incredibly inefficient. You become completely dependent on VPN server bandwidth, its current load, routing, etc. I've used many VPNs, in addition to configuring VPN services for our work infrastructure. It's effective, but it introduces all kinds of drawbacks. I greatly prefer newgroups or even better, torrent aggregators. There's essentially no worry about any DMCA notices. You're using all available bandwidth for downloading. You don't have to bother with a torrent client and the seeding of others. My torrent aggregator sources from pirate bay and many others, so if it's available on any of the torrent sites it's available to me without ever going to those sites. I go to one website, perform a search for what I want, and download it worry free. No additional client, no VPN connection to establish and remember to turn off once I'm finished. The site does all the dirty work. If the content is something like movies or TV, I can even stream it directly from the site. It has the ability to take something like a collection of RAR files for a TV season, and make that streamable on the fly directly from the website. I search for content, and have the ability to directly stream or download. They even provide an API so I could use some Python and have a couchpotato type setup. There's already an existing KODI addon for the one I use, so I can add the addon and stream everything that way without ever having to do anything other than browsing the addon. I pay a small monthly fee, but it's so worth it I wouldn't bat an eye at paying double what I'm currently paying for it. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Fish:
The very nature of how VPNs work make them incredibly inefficient. You become completely dependent on VPN server bandwidth, its current load, routing, etc. I've used many VPNs, in addition to configuring VPN services for our work infrastructure. It's effective, but it introduces all kinds of drawbacks. I greatly prefer newgroups or even better, torrent aggregators. There's essentially no worry about any DMCA notices. You're using all available bandwidth for downloading. You don't have to bother with a torrent client and the seeding of others. My torrent aggregator sources from pirate bay and many others, so if it's available on any of the torrent sites it's available to me without ever going to those sites. I go to one website, perform a search for what I want, and download it worry free. No additional client, no VPN connection to establish and remember to turn off once I'm finished. The site does all the dirty work. If the content is something like movies or TV, I can even stream it directly from the site. It has the ability to take something like a collection of RAR files for a TV season, and make that streamable on the fly directly from the website. I search for content, and have the ability to directly stream or download. They even provide an API so I could use some Python and have a couchpotato type setup. There's already an existing KODI addon for the one I use, so I can add the addon and stream everything that way without ever having to do anything other than browsing the addon. I pay a small monthly fee, but it's so worth it I wouldn't bat an eye at paying double what I'm currently paying for it.
You make a pretty good case for torrent aggregators. I will confess that I have never used one and I'm not really that familiar with them.
Which one do you use? I may have to check it out. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Lex Luthor:
You make a pretty good case for torrent aggregators. I will confess that I have never used one and I'm not really that familiar with them.
