this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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Why WARP is OK for torrenting (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
20 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Posts from 1-2 years ago conclude WARP doesn't really protect your IP when torrenting. But it does protect it in the present.

You can verify yourself using these checkers that your IP is properly hidden:

Logging?

https://developers.cloudflare.com/warp-client/privacy/

https://www.cloudflare.com/application/privacypolicy/

They say they don't log the link between your IP and the sites you visit. They say they just use your IP to assign to your the Cloudflare IP.

Speed? I can max out my ISP speed, which is pretty decent. (With the free version, no need to pay for WARP+)

Free, decently fast, decent privacy policy. IMO good enough for the average pirate who doesn't want to pay. Thoughts?

__ Edit: WARP is https://1.1.1.1/, a free VPN. I wanted to mention this because it's often said that you need a paid VPN for torrenting in some countries like the US or Germany

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's WARP?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A VPN from Cloudflare if I'm not mistaken, with a free tier.

https://kumu.io/sobeyharker/vpn-relationships#vpn-company-relationships/cloudflare-warp

https://1.1.1.1/

I had forgotten about this. Looks neat still

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yes it's this. I should have put a link.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Oh cool! Thanks for explaining.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

WARP is a great. The only issue when it comes to torrenting is you can't drill open any ports. Makes seeding super hard near impossible.

Other than that, yeah it will protect all traffic and is insanely fast for a free service (I snapped 700Mbps and my line is 1Gbps).

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

To me it is not 100% clear if your IP is always hidden

This community post talks about mixed results although it says that issue was fixed

A quick Google search and many sites say that warp does not hide your IP altough some say that they added that feature

However this post and this post from the cloudflare team says it does hide your ip.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

When you visit a site that using Cloudflare, the site receives your IP address in a header. Sites not using Cloudflare do not. When torrenting, it's possible that one of the trackers uses Cloudflare and gets your IP in that header, but it's not a concern as other peers only receive the VPN IP.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This was true in the past.

But right now, according to this, they deny it specically: "WARP replaces your original IP address with a Cloudflare IP [...]. This happens regardless of whether the site is on the Cloudflare network or not."

I don't know of a checker to individually verify this quickly, but I assume they say the truth.

Anyway, I think you are right in that it wouldn't be a concern for torrenting, if it was true for the present.

Edit: I found a tool to verify this now: this http header checker is using Cloudflare according to the urlvoid scan. And I can't see my real IP in the X-Forwarded-For and CF-Connecting-IP HTTP headers

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Websites and third party services often infer geolocation from your IP address, and now, 1.1.1.1 + WARP replaces your original IP address with one that consistently and accurately represents your approximate location.

no thanks I don't want to reveal my approximate location

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I believe the feature was included at the end of 2022. I know it works right now because I tested with the ip-leak checkers

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Cloudflares blog posts say so so I assume this is true but I would still recommend everyone to verify this for themselves before receiving letters from law firms.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What’s the difference between using WARP and just setting 1.1.1.1 as your DNS on the router?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Setting 1.1.1.1 as the DNS server on a router will simply use the Cloudflare DNS server instead of your ISP DNS server. It improves speed and makes it harder to the ISP to track your activity, or block sites for you. But still they still see to which IP addreses you are connecting to. And anybody with your IP can see what files you are torrenting (this can be checked at https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/)

WARP will route all your traffic through the Cloudflare servers (like any other VPN). So your IP is hidden from the public when torrenting, and from the sites you visit. And your ISP doesn't know what sites you are visiting

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just checked the page for my own ip, my past seedbox IP and my current seedbox IP

My current (dynamic) ISP IP: No downloads. Makes sense, as I do not have torrenting.
My historic seedbox IP: No downloads. Strange but the website claims it tracks the DHT protocol and I am pretty sure I rarely used DHT for my torrents back then
My current seedbox IP: Multiple downloads from today about me supposedly downloading XXX stuff amd various kinds of games and movies.

The site doesn't know all shit or at least not maps it to the correct IP. I am not interested in torrenting porn anyway and if, I would probably not download it from DHT and more likely be around private trackers
I don't torrent games ever. The only pieces of software I did are photoshop and illustrator and switch games.
Is my seedbox hacked? Not impossible. I found an open seedbox FTP connection on shodan and have the power to connect to the FTP share. Is kind of interesting to see what others download.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Your seedbox probably shares the same IP address with other people. So those xxx downloads are from them.

the DHT is just a decentralised torrent index that lists all torrents in public trackers, plus the ones seeded by people with DHT enabled in their client, iirc

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I believe (my) seedbox IP is unique. Else private trackers would certainly throw a fit because of shared accounts due to IPs.

I will ask my hoster. Seems interesting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You are incorrect. If you pay for a seedbox, it is almost guaranteed to be a shared box. Unless your seedbox costs you over $100/mo, you don't have exclusive control over it or the IP it uses.

Private trackers know how seedbox companies operate, therefore don't really give a shit that you're sharing an IP to seed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah nvmd. I asked my hoster today.
It's shared.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I've been using warp since a couple of years. I honestly didn't care about my IP being leaked to the torrent sites because I no longer try to visit any honeypot. The only thing I wanted was to keep my ISP away from my actions and warp has always done that seamlessly.

I did a test with my pihole where pihole was unable to block any adverts when I was connected to warp which made me realise that it's not just a custom dns solution but a tunnel to the website where no one else can snoop on your traffic.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Afaik, there was a script that gives you free data for Warp+ too.