Hi all.

I’ve pirated before, but on my own independent network. For reasons I won’t get into I’ve gone from living independently to living with roommates, and while I personally don’t have anything against piracy myself, my current concern is that because things are on a shared network, I don’t want them to get dinged by our ISP should I get caught in the act.

Beforehand, because it was my own network, my actions, my consequences to face in the rare circumstance that I do get caught (which hasn’t happened yet), everything was smooth sailing.However, even if the likelihood of this happening is low, I don’t want others facing consequences for my own actions.

What are some ways I can generally mitigate this issue? I mostly just pirate movies, and was curious if using streaming websites from FMHY or using SoulSeek would have the same risk as torrenting.

Edit: My region is Canada to help.

  • TerdFerguson@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    VPN. With port forwarding capability if you care about performance.

    I realize that some folks say “dont worry youre in canada”

    We also live in a world where laws change, and whether or not you may be punished for your historical activity is unknown… you’d assume not, but really its hard to say for sure.

    Protect yourself, not because you must but because you should.

    • Nollij@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      1·
      9 days ago

      VPN with a working Killswitch or network binding.

      I used to have a VPN where their “network lock” feature treated “reconnecting” the same as “connected”. Meaning that every time the connection dropped, everything was being sent in the clear.

      Seedbox is also an appropriate answer.

      • magic_smoke@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        9 days ago

        This is why I keep a dedicated VM on its own subnet for torrenting, with the VPN handled by pfsense.

        Can’t get out on the wrong IP if your NAT and Firewall rules only work for the VPN Gateway

        • waxrhetorical@feddit.dkEnglish
          1·
          8 days ago

          For someone whose main focus isn’t networking, do you have a guide or similar I can read to catch up? I’m running my setup on a properly killswitched VPN, but having firewall rules that are only valid for the VPN seems like an interesting extra step.

  • Saiwal@utsukta.org
    1·
    10 days ago

    if you use torrents without a VPN it can cause problems. For general streaming websites i dont think there would be any issue. soulseek also would not be an issue. The ISP reports usually come when you seed/leech a public torrent and there are bots that automatically send IP notice to the ISP of the IP they see (since its public). Therefore using private trackers is a bit more secure in this manner but for the best solution use a VPN.

  • ColdBrewedPiss@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    10 days ago

    I’m in camp seed box, or go the Real Debrid/Stremio route and don’t actually host any files on your network. Usenet, maybe with SoulSeek, is also a good route to go.

    Otherwise, as others have said, get a VPN. Spend the money you’re not spending on streaming sites on a good one, like Mullvad.

    • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      9 days ago

      Don’t use Mullvad, not because they aren’t good but because they don’t have port forwarding which is necessary to properly connect to others in the swarm.