I wrote this post for a friend, I’m sharing it here for anybody it might help. I got asked multiple times how I download cracked music software so I figured it’d be easier to write it down once. It’s meant for people with very low technical skills who just want to start torrenting software without major risks, and it includes a bunch of safety tips that are already known in this community.
If you have feedback, let me know and I’ll update the post.
This is going to be a total noob (and thus stupid) question, but is it possible to selfhost a vpn?
No such thing as a stupid question :p
Yes, you can self-host a VPN! Though there are a few things to keep in mind if you are going to torrent using one:
- A self-hosted VPN on your own network isn’t good for torrenting. Your own IP is still shown to other peers on the torrent, you might as well torrent without the VPN.
- Depending on your server host, you may not be allowed to torrent on their network.
- If you are allowed to torrent, you will have to watch your bandwidth limit*. I have a cheap VPS - for other things unrelated to VPNs/torrenting - and the limit is 20TB of traffic
- Many hosts will respond to DMCA/Abuse complaints - very few are relaxed and ignore DMCA complaints, others may shut off your access to their services after a single complaint
*some hosts do not have a limit though cheap servers usually do.
From what I can tell, most server hosts don’t care about what you are doing with your server, unless your server is gathering abuse reports or using an excessive amount of resources constantly. I would go for a subscription to a VPN instead of self-hosting but that’s just me.
