First, even if you have a good VPN, you can have dns leaks which is where your VPN is masking your ip but they can still id you cz your pc is configured to look up domain names outside of your vpn and your real ip is exposed. The good news is that you can configure things to avoid this and then use sites like ipleak.net / ipleak.org / dnsleaktest.com to verify you don't have any dns leaks. probably also a good idea - BEFORE you start downloading shit - to use ipmagnet or something similar to do a test torrent to make sure your ip isn't being leaked by your torrent client.
Second, not all VPNs are equal. Especially the free ones suck. cz what happens is they see some ip from a honeypot torrent, then they subpoena the VPN who owns that ip and demand your real ip. The free ones will roll over instantly and rat you out cz there's no money or anything else in it for them so why would they help. Not all of the paid ones are automatically good either tho. There's a lot of lying bastards who say they are "no log VPNs" but aren't really cz they still turn things over when subpoenaed. So you have to do research to find out which ones are telling the truth. Usually you can find things online about certain VPNs having been takin to court and really not having any logs to give authories (like Private Internet Access aka PIA who got subpoenaed by FBI but had nothing to give them so their users remained safe) or having trusted third party audit firms who have been allowed to visit and look over/confirm their settings really have no logs. These sites are good reading before you pick a true no-log VPN:
I hear Mullvad is one of the best but I think they are a little pricer than some of the others. I used both Nord and PIA before and never had issues with either.
Stuff other guy said about port forwarding is also true if you are using port forwarding (generally this is something you need to set up on the router so you would probably know if you are using it)
Additionally, I don’t think a copyright holder would need to set up a honeypot.
Like you say, they probably don't need to. But historically, there have definitely been fake torrents out there that are essentially used as honeypots. Varies widely as to how they do it. like some might have a video sample or something, some might just be a bogus file that looks about the right size, and so on.
couldn't agree more. I watch pretty much everything on a 50" 720p TV from 10ish years ago. as long as its not some god awful 240p pixelated garbage, I'm fine. When I go over to some buddies places where they have newer nicer tvs and the qaulity is better, I still am 99% focused on story and idaf about the pockmarks on someones face etc.
I don't hate extra quality but end of the day, i want to prioritize disk space without having complete garbage on quality. love it when encoders can do stuff in x265 instead of x264 to cut off a few extra MB.
i have a theory that when quality started going crazy (2K by my mark) is about the same time where story quality in tv shows started taking a big dive. Byt I'm sure lot of ppl not agree lol.
In this case, one of the shows was aired recently and my public torrent rss feeds didn't find it (I did not have a rss for EZTV at the time and they appear to be the only ones who covered it, but like I said, they completely skipped one of the episodes...). I think for sonaar, I would need to have usenet indexer already for it to pull from it (used to use it just for torrents) so seems like it wouldn't make a big difference here cz its a cart before the horse kind of problem.
e.g. sonaar would need me to add more sources first... but i don't know which sources other than public torrents are good for this kind of thing.
edit: was thinking i couldn't mention show nsmes but after re-reading rule 3, i think it meant more for linking to specific things or requesting links. especially after seeing posts like this I think merely mentioning show names might not be as big a deal as I originally thought.
Mods, if i am mistaken, please delete this comment or message me and tell me how i fucked up
shows I was referring to in main post were Forgeed in Fire and Tuff as Nails. TAN is the one I currently having issues with.
That's more or less right but there's more to it.
First, even if you have a good VPN, you can have dns leaks which is where your VPN is masking your ip but they can still id you cz your pc is configured to look up domain names outside of your vpn and your real ip is exposed. The good news is that you can configure things to avoid this and then use sites like ipleak.net / ipleak.org / dnsleaktest.com to verify you don't have any dns leaks. probably also a good idea - BEFORE you start downloading shit - to use ipmagnet or something similar to do a test torrent to make sure your ip isn't being leaked by your torrent client.
Second, not all VPNs are equal. Especially the free ones suck. cz what happens is they see some ip from a honeypot torrent, then they subpoena the VPN who owns that ip and demand your real ip. The free ones will roll over instantly and rat you out cz there's no money or anything else in it for them so why would they help. Not all of the paid ones are automatically good either tho. There's a lot of lying bastards who say they are "no log VPNs" but aren't really cz they still turn things over when subpoenaed. So you have to do research to find out which ones are telling the truth. Usually you can find things online about certain VPNs having been takin to court and really not having any logs to give authories (like Private Internet Access aka PIA who got subpoenaed by FBI but had nothing to give them so their users remained safe) or having trusted third party audit firms who have been allowed to visit and look over/confirm their settings really have no logs. These sites are good reading before you pick a true no-log VPN:
https://proprivacy.com/vpn/comparison/best-no-logs-vpns
https://torrentfreak.com/best-vpn-anonymous-no-logging/
I hear Mullvad is one of the best but I think they are a little pricer than some of the others. I used both Nord and PIA before and never had issues with either.
Stuff other guy said about port forwarding is also true if you are using port forwarding (generally this is something you need to set up on the router so you would probably know if you are using it)
Like you say, they probably don't need to. But historically, there have definitely been fake torrents out there that are essentially used as honeypots. Varies widely as to how they do it. like some might have a video sample or something, some might just be a bogus file that looks about the right size, and so on.