Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ @lemmy.dbzer0.com Karce @wizanons.dev 2y ago

Stop relying on VPNs - Just use your computer with i2p

After the Mullvad fiasco I decided to stop using VPNs all together, since port forwarding is always going to be a problem on all of them, if you read the reasons why Mullvad had to shut down that service.

There is a better way using i2p which conceals your IP and makes it impossible for anyone to know what or if you're downloading at all! No DMCA notices, no problem.

I wrote this small guide to another comment and figured I'd share it in its own post since I'm seeing so many people ask for VPN recommendations.

So there are 2 main implementations of i2p. First is the main Dev’s Java client here https://geti2p.net/en/download

The other is i2pd, which is C++.

I use the Java one personally but both would work. Someone posted back on reddit a guide on /r/i2p for qbittorrent, which is what I use now for this too. The guide was shared as a public torrent you can download with this info hash: 3f1d51095f9b116739172c1bced149acf2b10692

Use that hash with any of the various public trackers and you should be able to download that guide.

But if you just want a basic setup, that Java client comes with i2psnark, which is a Bittorrent client already setup.

The only other thing you want to do is go and search the biggest tracker for stuff, which is called PaTracker, Postman’s tracker. http://tracker2.postman.i2p, only accessible from i2p itself, which you’ll need to have setup and running first to view.

This tracker needs more seeders and uploaders in general, and by improving those things service for everyone is better. So the more the merrier.

Thanks! Feel free to ask any questions, there also might be other people who use i2p now for torrenting. I'm sure they'll help too.

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I2p is not a substitution for a proxy. I2p is an end-to-end encryption Network and unless it's changed over the past couple of years it's incredibly slow for any multimedia transfer. Coupled on top of that you have to have the knowledge to be able to set up your full system to route all traffic through it. So using it as a a security step for most people is already out of the question. It's not like a VPN where you can just plug and play. Having your entire network communicate through l2p is going to make everything substantially slower.
What Mullvad fiasco? I'm still using them :|
I'm skeptical of changing what works. Haven't had any issues with the VPN I use. I'll keep this in mind for sure nonetheless.
That's the moment when lemmy became more relavant than reddit to me.
I2pd + Qbittorrent is the best solution. Simple to setup and works great, the only catch is that right now you need to use the Qbittorrent alpha version (because it has i2p support) or just wait for the release.

Highly recommend experimenting with i2p, there's cool stuff on it as well!

And if more people join i2p to torrent the faster the speeds will get. You are a seeder of the i2p network basically. (Which is great!)
Fuck, this is how I find out Mullvad is dropping support for port forwarding.

I already have a protonmail account, guess I'll get the VPN too now. My entire setup relies on using wireguard on the firewall level, so another solution like i2p won't work
Can you go a bit more into detail what it actually is, what are its advantages and disadvantages and how it works? I find it weird that people are still paying for VPNs if the superior solution that consists of just running this program existed this whole time, there's gotta be a catch that you're not mentioning. What or who exactly guarantees anonymity and safety if using this tool?
What mullvad fiasco??
Huh, I've been using a VPN for torrent without setting up any kind of port forwarding! Can someone explain why you might want to do this?
Thanks for the info. Although this can't really replace VPNs for my specific use-cases, this is still very useful info to have just in case. Good to know there are alternatives. Thanks also for including the info hash for the guide.
Mullvad fiasco? What did I miss?
Doesn't this make every user the equivalent of a Tor exit node? Meaning you'll have possibly dodgy traffic appearing to come from your internet service?
It was not a fiasco. It showed us that they can be trusted.
How well does i2p mesh with private trackers? Would they be able to track up/down ratios?
I'm hoping DHT and PEX support comes to libtorrent eventually so that qbittorrent can use DHT/PEX with I2P and not just http trackers. I think only i2psnark and a few other clients support it right now. I encourage everyone to cross seed their public torrents to the I2P network and upload to patracker to support the network. Unfortunately, for niche content and private trackers VPNs/seedboxes are a necessity
I had never heard of it! Thx for the tip
PSA: qbittorrent has early access (still in development) for native i2p torrenting. I recommend waiting for that to be officially released
Could you add a block about I2P in general?
I just changed to AirVPN.
Some alternatives I considered: using i2p (but was unaware of the tracker you mentioned) and exploring a fancy VPN called Orchid because it seemed fancy, but gave up on the last two.
I'll try again i2p to share my Ubuntu ISO.
I have never used i2p but isn't it pretty slow? I only have experience with Tor and it's not recommended to torrent through Tor. I did listen to the interviews of both Tor and i2p on a Privacy podcast but it was a while back
I'm looking up I2P vs VPN and people are saying that I2P cannot replace VPN but I fail to understand why. Can I get some more insight to that?
Interesting stuff, I had heard of i2p before, but mostly in connection with darknet and not yet with torrenting, but it‘s something I might play around with now that I know.
Has anyone tried to use this with Docker and Raspberry Pi? It doesn't appear to work for me: i2p_1 | standard_init_linux.go:219: exec user process caused: no such file or directory which I think is probably an architecture error. I saw somewhere on Reddit someone was working on an Arm64 docker, but can't find the post now.
I'll read up on this. It's new for me and thr first time hearing of it, but we should always consider working alternatives
Why not Tor?
Can you port forward with i2p?
I use private internet access for years with port forwarding after almost getting booted from my ISP, been fine here

126 comments