I’m considering joining my first private tracker. It turns out that most of them need you to pass an interview connected through your home IP. I understand this is a reasonable way to filter scammers and duplicate accounts. Still, to those who did it, how do you feel knowing your main IP is stored and associated to your torrenting history?

38 points

Idk, i never gave aa fuck.

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4 points

In general that might be a recipe for better living 99.9% of the time, yet for the paranoid it remains a hard art to master!

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1 point

are you really that paranoid? then use I2P.

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33 points

I wouldn’t join a private tracker that requires me to expose my real IP. It doesn’t sound serious at all.

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5 points

Same. I run a VPN 24/7. I always wear my seatbelt! 😉

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3 points

Thanks, still some apparently major ones require it, might be the case that I need to keep looking for alternatives.

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23 points

Just use Usenet.

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8 points

Is there an eli5 to start using it?

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Eweka.nl as usenet subscription. Sabnzbd as usenet downloader (this is where you add the nzb files)

Some forum for Usenet files to download. If you want some, dm me.

That’s basically all you need

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8 points

This. Torrenting is fine, but I’m more than happy to pay a small fee for faster speeds and an encrypted connection.

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1 point

I guess you can say I’m a very old pirate when people shared ftps and call them pubs and downloading from bots on mirc kazzaa and emule. I never heard about usenet until I started using lemmy and since then it’s all I hear about lol. I tried to understand it but it feels very complex and cost money

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18 points

Private trackers really aren’t masters of op sec. They thrive through security through obscurity which the worst kind of “security”. And generally even fail at that (PTP, BTN, RED, OPS are so widely known)

That said I use them and I also don’t use a VPN so I just take that risk. It’s up to you

IP2 definitely sounds intriguing as truly (or close to) anonymous peer to peer

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3 points

Are you talking about i2p? I’m using it rn, have had no complaints besides it bein a bit slower but nothing horrendous. its at least faster than dialup

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14 points

I’ve never had one that required an interview, but my primary private tracker requires you to log into the webpage not on a VPN. They still suggest heavily that any torrenting is done on a VPN though.

If the owners of the site are competent, they’re gonna hash your IP for their logs and not store the actual IP. Hashing is a one-way process, they won’t be able to reconstruct your IP from it. If they’re storing your raw IP, probably stay away. (Honestly, you can’t do nearly as much damage with an IP address as people think, but it’d be a hint to way worse security practices elsewhere)

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3 points

Thanks. Question is: how can one know the security practices behind the scenes? I guess it’s a matter of trust and luck after all!

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1 point

Trust. No way there are trackers that have been audited

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