Do you use an anonymous network for downloading?
Do you use an anonymous network for downloading?
Controversial take: TOR shouldn't be used to download large amounts of pirates stuff. The network is already slow and congested and should be kept available for people that need it to fight censorship or other forms of oppression.
Why not get a VPN? Even a free one like Proton allows DDL and gives you protection. And it's also faster.
I don't like DDL over Tor as it is not really designed for heavy bandwidth. I2P could be the future once more users start using it, right now BiglyBT can crossover on the clearnet and I2P.
IIRC TOR is OK with a stream from one source (DDLs fit the bill), but isn't made for handling many streams at once. I2P is good for that --> torrenting over I2P doesn't stress the network as much.
I2P needs more nodes though. It's much slower than TOR
Thank you for the correction, it is true that a DDL is a single connection usually, where as torrenting is many connections and that is what's bad for Tor.
I toyed with i2p several years ago. Back then it was very frustrating - both slow as a snail and hard to find working, non-darknet resources.
I recently saw a c++ implementation, so I will toy with it again.
For now, a VPN is enough for me to be safe, and I can get speeds up to 15 MB on popular torrents.
I couldn't get past "Firewalled" stage when I tried i2p. Too slow for me back then.
Is TOR good for direct downloads? Isn't it pretty slow?
TOR now has quite some big nodes. If you're lucky and your path goes through them, you can hit speeds of around 1MB/s - I know I have.
Plus, with a small linux box that downloads the stuff for you overnight, it's not really an issue. You can use JDownloader with TOR as a proxy. Add links to it to download, go to bed and wake up with everything downloaded 🫰
Me and a few friends pitch in together and pay for a seedbox. Much more convenient since I don’t need to keep my computer running to download/seed. And you connect to it via encrypted FTP.
Just use Usenet
Isn't that pay to use? And is it anonymous?
Just as anonymous as a vpn (usenet instead of a vpn). Plus it's the host taking the risk, not the customers; cops/copyright holders are interested in the distribution not the consumption. With torrents, you are the host and a consumer; usenet your just a consumer.
I pay 8$/mo for the usenet provider and indexer together and get a constant 45-50mbps download speed out of it (mostly limited by disk speed really). I've also found far more content available via usenet and one indexer vs the 18+ torrent indexers I used to use.
Enable full bidirectional encryption in your torrent client and only use reputable private tracker communities, and you won't have these kind of issues
Some private trackers that I use say that the torrent client should not fully enable encryption due to the tracker not being able to track up/download stats iirc.
Been doing some DC++ over Yggdrasil with good success
Yggdrasil
Doesn't seem to be anonymous (emphasis mine)
Is Yggdrasil anonymous?
No, it is not a goal of the Yggdrasil project to provide anonymity. Direct peers over the Internet will be able to see your IP address and may be able to use this information to determine your location or identity. Multicast-discovered peerings on the same network will typically expose your device MAC address. Other nodes on the network may be able to discern some information about which nodes you are peered with.
I hope you aren't relying on it for anonymity.
Define "anonymous". I use Soulseek, but you need an account for that.
Anonymous as the source doesn't know your real IP and intermediate nodes don't know what you're saying (encryption).
With I2P and TOR, only the entry nodes know your real IP, but they don't know what you're saying (thus don't know what you're accessing), and the target node or exit node doesn't know who requested the data.
I often use Tribler for torrents. It’s a TOR-like system specialized into torrent, and does work well with any torrents. (I’ll put a warning that the system might not be totally safe against targetted attack, but it should be against standard complaint to ISP)
Yeah I seed some printable firearms files torrents over I2P, and seed other stuff I find on tracker2.postman.i2p
No. I’m in US and just use one tracker, torrent leech. It’s never caused my ISP to flag me and I’ve used it over 10 years now. If you have a good source for torrents you don’t need a VPN
For torrents, a VPN might be the best bet as others have pointed out. But for direct download, just DoH should be enough.