Other protection in addition to VPN?

VPN
1

New to torrenting and got interested in privacy & safety.

I’m planning on getting a VPN, but those can be subject to vulnerabilities. What could work as a second line of defense?

I was looking at I2P and seed boxes but not quite sure how they work. I am interested in torrenting and streaming, and generally becoming more private online.

Update for other newcomers: binding a quality VPN to a quality Torrent client is enough.

2

You should bind your VPN network interface to the torrent client.
https://www.reddit.com/r/VPNTorrents/comments/qishn4/bind_your_torrenting_client_to_your_vpns_interface/

3

Seedboxes are good but, they hold more information about you than VPN companies do. Mainly because you are putting content on their servers. So they are legally responsible for the content that is held on them. If you are on a private tracker get one. If not, just use the VPN.

If you want to become more private online head over to r/PrivacyGuides and take a look at their webpage. They’ll both give you great information about maintaining some online privacy.

4

Install a firewall program like simplewall, this helps with reducing telemetry from apps installed on your device

5

Double VPN. One on the client machine and one on your router. So if something goes wrong with the client VPN you still have a second layer of protection. Ideally only signup, login to their website, etc for the client VPN over the router VPN and pay anonymously.

Both VPN firewalls should be set to drop all traffic if vpn connection goes down.

Even further you could route through Tor on top of your VPNs.

6

SOCKS5 imho is more secure in that it can’t drop and expose you. It’s also specific to your torrent app.

7

Is this considered “the strongest” method for privacy?

I know of binding & kill switch, but I don’t know if that could be paired with another step of protection.

8

Thanks for the information!

9

I’m new so please bare with me— one VPN would be on my computer (opened in Windows) and another through qbitorrent for example?

I thought Tor discouraged torrenting. Unsure what that actually means in practice though.

10

Thanks, so Peerblock is a type of firewall? I’ll have to check out how those work more in detail.

11

This is one of the methods.
If you are in doubt that you will not be able to configure it yourself, try seedbox. There you only need to specify the task, and then download the file using one of the protocols (https, ftp and others).
Try to search for similar topics, there have already been similar questions and answers (do not think that this is rude, but the same thing every time).

12

Ignore this person. Tor highly discourages torrenting. It puts a high amount of load on the network and doesn’t provide very good results for you (the user). Not only that, but you can’t port forward through Tor, which will decrease your peer/seed discovery greatly. You only need one VPN that has the fail switch on, and your torrent client bound to your VPN’s network interface. That way, your torrent client can only send data through the VPN. And to add on to all of this, your threat model is not a local police agency so you don’t need to pay anonymously. Just use a credit card and get Mullvad, you’ll be fine. There are plenty of other guides on this sub and on the web that can teach you how to port forward through Mullvad (not at all related to your router).

13

First VPN would be on your router. Second would be on the computer running your BitTorrent client. It’s not a bad solution of you really want a “second line of defense”. Note that just a few years ago qBittorrent’s bind to an adapter functionality was completely broke in Linux.

You are correct that torrent’ing over Tor is not recommended because of the load it puts on the Tor network.

14

It’s an app that blocks your computer from connecting to certain IP’s. You’re better off with the VPN.

15

No worries; Reddit questions get repetitive for certain topics. I’m also starting to think that I might be overthinking this for the scale of online activities I’m interested in lol. A good VPN that is correctly binded with my torrent client should be fine, as you recommended. Thanks for your input.

16

That’s what I thought. Thanks for the info. As I replied to another user, being new to privacy and safety has overcomplicated things. Yes, there are risks. But a VPN/Torrent client bind combo will suit my needs.

17

Thanks for the heads up. As I read upon it, it didn’t sound like it would necessarily benefit me

18

And it is significantly outdated, even if you pay for the subscriptions.