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Is a VPN necessary for torrenting? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago by Alextheacceptable@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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I don't live in the US, so my ISP doesn't really seem to care what I torrent, but the megathread vehemently recommends to always use one. Since VPNs aren't cheap and I'm on a strict budget (wouldn't pirate otherwise), is it really that dangerous to torrent without one?

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[-] SolOrion@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

Would that really matter, though? Afaik, they could still just.. ask your ISP who that IP was assigned to, which is what they're going to do with IPv4 anyways.

[-] fell@ma.fellr.net 0 points 1 year ago

@SolOrion They don't deal with ISPs outside the country, because they can't sue them at a German court.

So they need to know it's a German ISP beforehand so they can request personal information accordingly. But maybe they could still figure it out from IPv6 address ranges... I'm not entirely sure.

[-] the1HOknocks@fedia.io 2 points 1 year ago

Yes you can do that easiely with a ripe whois query. And they definitely do.

[-] Port8080@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

You get an IPv6 prefix from your ISP. This way you have thousands of public addresses for yourself, but they still can identify you by the prefix.

Maybe even better as with IPv4. Because nowadays most people have DualStack Lite which means you have unique public IPv6 addresses but only a shared IPv4 address.