VPN’s don’t cost nearly that much. You can find a VPN on this lemmy post. It doesn’t matter what you chose no VPN that I’ve ever seen costs that much money. And many people on private trackers risk going without VPN’s because copyright trolls are quite rare on them.
There is a lot of malware
This is true on certain public trackers. But not on private trackers, or trackers verified by fmhy.net.
several download clients are known to use your machine in the background to mine crypto
This is easily avoided by using a popular open source BitTorrent client, the most popular one being qBittorrent.
there’s an open connection to your machine which could be used by hackers as torrent connections aren’t very safe.
I’m not sure this is true, could you possibly provide a source? I had believed torrents are quite secure since the connection is encrypted and it uses hashing to verify what you downloaded matches the .torrent file.
I’ve always been on the team torrent, although I have never tried Usenet. I can definitely see the appeal of not having to worry about ratio or giving back to the community, but that is part of the appeal to me. Do Usenet groups or indexers have a community surrounding them? Private torrent trackers always have forums to chat about media your watching/reading/listening or talk about quality or other random things. Does Usenet have a similar situation?
This is easily avoided by using a popular open source BitTorrent client, the most popular one being qBittorrent.
Lol yeah qbittorrent is known to exploit your device for crypto mining. They also bought utorrent, which is also used for that. A safe download client is Deluge.
I had believed torrents are quite secure since the connection is encrypted and it uses hashing to verify what you downloaded matches the .torrent file.
The encryption is very poor. As soon as you download a movie with a torrent the German government will send you a letter stating the movie you downloaded, with the exact date and time, and a hefty fine. The encryption is old and simple.
Do Usenet groups or indexers have a community surrounding them?
Yeah, there are many tracker sites with a vast community and there are applications which function as indexers which have a large community too. There are comments under almost every post.
Lol yeah qBittorrent is known to exploit your device for crypto mining. They also bought uTorrent, which is also used for that. A safe download client is Deluge.
Where are you getting this from?? These are huge claims and I’m not sure if there is any evidence for either of them. qBittorrent is a highly trusted torrent client used by thousands maybe millions of people and you are the first person I have ever seen make these claims.
The encryption is very poor. As soon as you download a movie with a torrent the German government will send you a letter stating the movie you downloaded, with the exact date and time, and a hefty fine. The encryption is old and simple.
Firstly this doesn’t describe how it can be used by hackers. Secondly I’m also not sure this is true either. My personal knowledge (mostly what I have heard from the piracy community) says ISP’s can block torrent connections but they don’t know what your downloading. You can get copyright infringement notices from ISP’s when copyright trolls join the torrent swarm and log all the IP addresses in the swarm.
It seems like you don’t know much about how torrenting actually works so please stop making these claims that aren’t actually backed up by sources/evidence.
Yeah, there are many tracker sites with a vast community and there are applications which function as indexers which have a large community too. There are comments under almost every post.
Where are you getting this from?? These are huge claims and I’m not sure if there is any evidence for either of them. qBittorrent is a highly trusted torrent client used by thousands maybe millions of people and you are the first person I have ever seen make these claims.
This is one of the many articles you can find about it.
It seems like you don’t know much about how torrenting actually works so please stop making these claims that aren’t actually backed up by sources/evidence.
Right back at ya mate. I’ve been downloading for 30 years, of which most years were with torrents. I know the protocol pretty well. I also know it’s risks. Here’s an article about it. Here’s another. The internet is swarmed with information about the safety and privacy risks or torrents, I’d suggest to do a search yourself.
My personal knowledge (mostly what I have heard from the piracy community) says ISP’s can block torrent connections but they don’t know what your downloading.
Hmm that’s weird. Then how did the German government know I downloaded 2 specific movies when I visited Germany and forgot to shut down my torrent client when I got onto the hotel wifi? I got a letter with the names of the movies, date and time and a hefty fine.
I must confess, I mistook qbittorrent for a product of BitTorrent Inc. which is a shady company that bought utorrent and used all their clients to push ads and allegedly mine crypto.
On the first article:
Firstly it has nothing to do with qBittorrent itself exploiting your device, its attackers exploiting qBittorrent.
A combination of unchanged default credentials
Yes if you don’t change the default password and configure your router to allow qBittorrent to open ports hackers can get in, this isn’t a security vulnerability it’s a user error.
Oh and I just read your bottom paragraph, yeah qBittorrent isn’t related to any large company. It’s generally trusted as a very good client by much of the community.
Second/third article:
I am aware of these risks. None of this seems to contradict any of my claims or what I already know.
Hmm that’s weird. Then how did the German government know I downloaded 2 specific movies when I visited Germany and forgot to shut down my torrent client when I got onto the hotel wifi? I got a letter with the names of the movies, date and time and a hefty fine.
It looks like Germany really cracks down on piracy. Although I can see that with dns requests could provide a way for people to find what your torrenting (which by default the ISP has full view of [dns requets] [but you can use dns over https and a different dns provider to help that]). Just a tip in general qBittorrent has a feature to bind your torrent connection to the VPN so that you it can’t connect to the internet aside from through the VPN. I’m not sure about deluge but it probably has something, it’s a really important feature to enable.
Although it looks like they still need to access the torrent swarm in order to properly frame you. So using private trackers should provide better protection against those risks. I usually use a VPN although I have gone naked in private trackers on rare occasions and it hasn’t been an issue yet… although copyright trolls in pt’s are pretty rare afaik and trolls get reported, triangulated and banned pretty quickly (afaik).
I’ve been downloading for 30 years, of which most years were with torrents.
VPN’s don’t cost nearly that much. You can find a VPN on this lemmy post. It doesn’t matter what you chose no VPN that I’ve ever seen costs that much money. And many people on private trackers risk going without VPN’s because copyright trolls are quite rare on them.
This is true on certain public trackers. But not on private trackers, or trackers verified by fmhy.net.
This is easily avoided by using a popular open source BitTorrent client, the most popular one being qBittorrent.
I’m not sure this is true, could you possibly provide a source? I had believed torrents are quite secure since the connection is encrypted and it uses hashing to verify what you downloaded matches the .torrent file.
I’ve always been on the team torrent, although I have never tried Usenet. I can definitely see the appeal of not having to worry about ratio or giving back to the community, but that is part of the appeal to me. Do Usenet groups or indexers have a community surrounding them? Private torrent trackers always have forums to chat about media your watching/reading/listening or talk about quality or other random things. Does Usenet have a similar situation?
Lol yeah qbittorrent is known to exploit your device for crypto mining. They also bought utorrent, which is also used for that. A safe download client is Deluge.
The encryption is very poor. As soon as you download a movie with a torrent the German government will send you a letter stating the movie you downloaded, with the exact date and time, and a hefty fine. The encryption is old and simple.
Yeah, there are many tracker sites with a vast community and there are applications which function as indexers which have a large community too. There are comments under almost every post.
Where are you getting this from?? These are huge claims and I’m not sure if there is any evidence for either of them. qBittorrent is a highly trusted torrent client used by thousands maybe millions of people and you are the first person I have ever seen make these claims.
Firstly this doesn’t describe how it can be used by hackers. Secondly I’m also not sure this is true either. My personal knowledge (mostly what I have heard from the piracy community) says ISP’s can block torrent connections but they don’t know what your downloading. You can get copyright infringement notices from ISP’s when copyright trolls join the torrent swarm and log all the IP addresses in the swarm.
It seems like you don’t know much about how torrenting actually works so please stop making these claims that aren’t actually backed up by sources/evidence.
This is interesting, thanks.
This is one of the many articles you can find about it.
Right back at ya mate. I’ve been downloading for 30 years, of which most years were with torrents. I know the protocol pretty well. I also know it’s risks. Here’s an article about it. Here’s another. The internet is swarmed with information about the safety and privacy risks or torrents, I’d suggest to do a search yourself.
Hmm that’s weird. Then how did the German government know I downloaded 2 specific movies when I visited Germany and forgot to shut down my torrent client when I got onto the hotel wifi? I got a letter with the names of the movies, date and time and a hefty fine.
Here’s an article on the German practices.
I must confess, I mistook qbittorrent for a product of BitTorrent Inc. which is a shady company that bought utorrent and used all their clients to push ads and allegedly mine crypto.
On the first article: Firstly it has nothing to do with qBittorrent itself exploiting your device, its attackers exploiting qBittorrent.
Yes if you don’t change the default password and configure your router to allow qBittorrent to open ports hackers can get in, this isn’t a security vulnerability it’s a user error.
Oh and I just read your bottom paragraph, yeah qBittorrent isn’t related to any large company. It’s generally trusted as a very good client by much of the community.
Second/third article: I am aware of these risks. None of this seems to contradict any of my claims or what I already know.
It looks like Germany really cracks down on piracy. Although I can see that with dns requests could provide a way for people to find what your torrenting (which by default the ISP has full view of [dns requets] [but you can use dns over https and a different dns provider to help that]). Just a tip in general qBittorrent has a feature to bind your torrent connection to the VPN so that you it can’t connect to the internet aside from through the VPN. I’m not sure about deluge but it probably has something, it’s a really important feature to enable.
Although it looks like they still need to access the torrent swarm in order to properly frame you. So using private trackers should provide better protection against those risks. I usually use a VPN although I have gone naked in private trackers on rare occasions and it hasn’t been an issue yet… although copyright trolls in pt’s are pretty rare afaik and trolls get reported, triangulated and banned pretty quickly (afaik).
My apologies, I made an assumption.