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Controversial take: TOR shouldn't be used to download large amounts of pirates stuff. The network is already slow and congested and should be kept available for people that need it to fight censorship or other forms of oppression.
Why not get a VPN? Even a free one like Proton allows DDL and gives you protection. And it's also faster.
Controversial take: TOR shouldn't be used to download large amounts of pirates stuff.
Maybe only controversial amongst entitled filesharers (read: those who are simply too lazy or cheap to use something else). The Tor project has been recommending against this since even before 2010: https://blog.torproject.org/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-idea/
I don't since I live in a third world country. Can seed at 1Gbps with no warnings whatsoever, 20€ monthly
I that case, why not help spread a little freedom in the rest of the world by hosting an I2P node?
We should make torrenting over I2P the default.
Any dissidents in places like China who are caught using it could then plausibly claim they were just downloading a movie.
I seed around 5Tb monthly but that sounds interesting
I2P
isnt hosting a node a very easy way to get the police knocking on your door? i dont want csam flowing through my network
All traffic over I2P is encrypted unless you use an outproxy (which isn't as common as a Tor exit node is), so no. Most, if not all I2P torrenting traffic never touches an outproxy, just like Tor hidden services (.onion sites and whatnot) never touch an exit node.
Hosting a Tor relay is fine even, as you are still just passing encrypted data around. It's running an exit node that can get you into some sketchy waters with your ISP/law enforcement.
Who is running the exit nodes then? 3 letters agencies?
Yeah in some cases, and in other cases it's still just volunteers with really good lawyers.
And even then, there's still no definitive link from the exit node back to the guard (entry) node/relay. And, if you're actually trying to be anonymous from 3 letter agencies, you wouldn't be messing with the clearnet (and therefore exit nodes) through Tor to begin with. You'd probably be sticking to Tor hidden services.
You use a VPN, right?
They don't need one. No enforceable copyright law.
Not really necessary everywhere. Still not a bad idea though I'm sure.
I don't like DDL over Tor as it is not really designed for heavy bandwidth. I2P could be the future once more users start using it, right now BiglyBT can crossover on the clearnet and I2P.
IIRC TOR is OK with a stream from one source (DDLs fit the bill), but isn't made for handling many streams at once. I2P is good for that --> torrenting over I2P doesn't stress the network as much.
I2P needs more nodes though. It's much slower than TOR
Thank you for the correction, it is true that a DDL is a single connection usually, where as torrenting is many connections and that is what's bad for Tor.
I toyed with i2p several years ago. Back then it was very frustrating - both slow as a snail and hard to find working, non-darknet resources.
I recently saw a c++ implementation, so I will toy with it again.
For now, a VPN is enough for me to be safe, and I can get speeds up to 15 MB on popular torrents.
I couldn't get past "Firewalled" stage when I tried i2p. Too slow for me back then.
Is TOR good for direct downloads? Isn't it pretty slow?
TOR now has quite some big nodes. If you're lucky and your path goes through them, you can hit speeds of around 1MB/s - I know I have.
Plus, with a small linux box that downloads the stuff for you overnight, it's not really an issue. You can use JDownloader with TOR as a proxy. Add links to it to download, go to bed and wake up with everything downloaded 🫰
I could not live with just 1MB/s down…
1MB/s is not enough? Most films are <1GB. That's <1000s / ~17minutes to download a film. Well enough to watch a few TED talks, read some ArsTechnica articles, or read a single Salon article. Hell, it's good enough to talk a short walk outside, fill up the dishwasher, tidy up the room a little, or lift a few weights.
Different priorities, I guess.
Me and a few friends pitch in together and pay for a seedbox. Much more convenient since I don’t need to keep my computer running to download/seed. And you connect to it via encrypted FTP.
Been doing some DC++ over Yggdrasil with good success
Yggdrasil
Doesn't seem to be anonymous (emphasis mine)
Is Yggdrasil anonymous?
No, it is not a goal of the Yggdrasil project to provide anonymity. Direct peers over the Internet will be able to see your IP address and may be able to use this information to determine your location or identity. Multicast-discovered peerings on the same network will typically expose your device MAC address. Other nodes on the network may be able to discern some information about which nodes you are peered with.
I hope you aren't relying on it for anonymity.
I should note that I'm not relying on Yggdrasil for anonymity inside the network, rather more for anonymity towards observations from outside the network. And also mostly anonymity towards what I'm communicating when observed from outside the network.
Understood. So, like torrents, anybody within the "swarm" would know what you're accessing?
If you're taking part in transmitting a torrent over Yggdrasil, then people you've peered with in the swarm will definitely see your Yggdrasil IP - which is based off of the encryption key you generate (and you can change whenever you wish) for the connection to the mesh.
Regarding obfuscation of what you're accessing inside something like the bittorrent DHT, that could likely be done with multiple Yggdrasil connections and torrent clients - so each address only associates with one torrent, it's just not a core feature of the network itself.
The Yggdrasil network really isn't meant to provide perfect internal anonymity between two directly communicating peers, it's instead built to be an easy-to-use, end-to-end encrypted, mesh network - with great performance.
It's there to protect the content and target of your communications from anyone beside you and said target, without adversely affecting the delivery of said content. Not to protect you from your communication target, though it can do a passable job at that too.
My main use of Yggdrasil has actually been as an easily setup alternative route into NATed systems, seeing as I can easily hit 600Mbit and get below 15ms of latency over it, which I quite often use to run VNC or SSH (and SCP/rsync) over. And since the mesh can be established as long as you can reach a node, it becomes ridiculously easy to get a functional link over it.
Transmitting DC++ traffic without my ISP being able to detect any of that is just a bonus.
Define "anonymous". I use Soulseek, but you need an account for that.
Anonymous as the source doesn't know your real IP and intermediate nodes don't know what you're saying (encryption).
With I2P and TOR, only the entry nodes know your real IP, but they don't know what you're saying (thus don't know what you're accessing), and the target node or exit node doesn't know who requested the data.
No. I’m in US and just use one tracker, torrent leech. It’s never caused my ISP to flag me and I’ve used it over 10 years now. If you have a good source for torrents you don’t need a VPN