Hello all,

I’m a huge amateur when it comes to this stuff (I had a guy hold my hand on the phone and walk me through this) but I use Newsgroupdirect and buy blocks when they go on sale.

Is there a better group to do this from (or cheaper). I’m happy here but I saw an article that had some different places listed and it got me thinking.

Which group do you use?

  • LoganNineFingers@lemmy.caOP
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    5 months ago

    I used to pay for a VPN and torrent everything but I’ll be honest, $ for $ it costs the same or less AND there is way more selection. I’m ok to pay a little for a better service. I don’t have to figure out what’s streaming on what and I get high quality tv and movies for pennies on the dollar. Even if I went the “free” route I still have to pay for a vpn

    • TCB13@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I won’t pay for piracy and that includes a pointless piece of shit VPN that won’t protect you anyways if things get serious.

      • LoganNineFingers@lemmy.caOP
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        5 months ago

        I imagine it must be nice living in a place where your government doesn’t care. Enjoy your free torrents. I’m ok with a few bucks here and there

        • TCB13@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          C’mon you’ve plenty of private trackers you can join with an invite from someone else and nobody will easily track you like they can do in public torrents.

          • LoganNineFingers@lemmy.caOP
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            5 months ago

            I’m kinda over this conversation. I posted asking for input, not someone being argumentative. If you had a stronger argument, maybe I’d change my ways and look into what you’re saying. I politely tried to say I hear you, but I’m good with what I do and you keep digging. At no point have you said anything that makes a strong case, helpful to what I asked or isn’t dismissive. Have a good night

            • TCB13@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              I do have an argument: https://lemmy.world/comment/7648533

              Any free private tracker worth your time has DHT/PEX disabled thus making their torrents invisible for your typical govt / private entity searching for pirates. If those torrents aren’t public and can’t be searched indexed via DHT then the ISP or whatever knows you’re using the bittorrent protocol but they don’t know for what content. This particularly correct if you use sane settings in your torrent clients such as a blocklist + requiring encryption for all connections.

              If you do those simple things and a use a private tracker you trust then your ISP/Govt can’t point fingers at you, they’ve no way of knowing what you’re downloading.

              • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Are you saying that you haven’t heard of media company affiliates prowling in such groups from invites given to them?

            • TCB13@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/peer/ – Plug your IP into that. Private tracker torrents are still visible to the public.

              What you’re saying isn’t correct, at least for properly configured private trackers and clients.

              I did try that website and that’s the thing, the only torrents that show up are public ones. Torrents from private trackers like iptorrents are not showing on that list as expected. They don’t show, because they can’t access them, just read their about page and you’ll understand why:

              Our system collects torrent files in two ways: parsing torrent sites and listening DHT network

              Any private tracker worth your time has DHT/PEX disabled for their torrents because if they didn’t then the torrents were essentially public.

              • thantik@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                What you’re saying isn’t correct, at least for properly configured private trackers and clients.

                That’s exactly what I said it’s for “to check and make sure your configuration is correct”. (here: https://old.lemmy.world/comment/7654711) I used it in the past and found out my split tunnel was leaking info on the DHT. It can help others make sure they aren’t leaking data too.

                • TCB13@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  That’s exactly what I said it’s for “to check and make sure your configuration is correct”.

                  What you said was: “Private tracker torrents are still visible to the public” and this isn’t true.

                  • thantik@lemmy.world
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                    5 months ago

                    I provided the link - if you want to be disingenuous that is your prerogative.

                    Private tracker torrents are still visible to the public. Just because it’s not on THAT particular website, doesn’t mean that someone isn’t on that private tracker leaking all the data. Bittorrent is not a private protocol.

      • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Your ISP is logging you. And everybody’s just sitting around waiting for the day that the feds decide to do something about piracy beyond icing a few domains there’s a difference between them knowing what you’re doing, and then being the handle the hand over exactly what you’re doing.

        • TCB13@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          If “feds decide to do something about piracy” I’m sure as shit your cheapo VPN isn’t going to protect you against them. People bought into all the marketing from VPN providers, that’s what’s really going on.