Thread: Where do I start?

So i'm your stereotypical broke college student looking for the most efficient/safe way to download torrents. I typically just go for software that I really need but don't currently have the money to buy and occasionally download music and movies. My main concern with torrenting is that the University I attend is apparently cracking down on pirates due to large amount of us that do it. I want to take every protocol to be safe and would like to find a legitimate/popular private tracker to join. I will do my part in seeding as I have a ridiculously fast download/upload speed here in my 5x5 dorm. I'm also looking into possibly purchasing a cheap vpn, but i'd like some reassurance that it would help protect me.



Any tips on how to go about joining a great private tracker and staying safe while torrenting are highly appreciated.

I am still getting adjusted to this forum and although I have searched, I haven't found particularly what I am looking for, but I must admin i'v only looked around for 15min or so.

Anyways, i'm looking forward to all of your inputs and advice. Thank You!

hi starplaya, I am thinking if your University is cracking down on this sort of thing so
I really don't know how to make it safe using their bandwidth and not getting caught?
you could though creat a intro here become a member of T_I as this would be a great first step
i am sure there will be other members here that will help you more, good luck

Hello and welcome to our community

The first step that you should take, is to make an introduction. You can do this by following this link: http://www.torrent-invites.com/start...tion-form.html .

Additionally, you should read and familiarise yourself with our rules. They can be found here: Torrent-Invites Rules and here: Torrent-Invites FAQ .

Once you have done that, you will be able to get any invite you want.


Now, to address your problem. I would recommend the following:

1. Seedbox with FTP
2. VPN

Sadly neither of these are free, however if you are serious about staying safe and anonymous whilst torrenting, they are necessary.

The reason why the seedbox needs to have FTP access is that FTP is rarely checked by ISP's, and almost certainly wont be checked by your university. ISP's (and universities), usually check the ports associated with P2P and bittorrent, not FTP.

I would recommend a VPN in order to keep your browsing and transfers anonymous and encrypted. A VPN is a Virtual Private Network, all your traffic is routed through it. Imagine it as an iron tunnel that is impenetrable, it will keep you safe online.
For that, I recommend a company such as hidemyass.com, or VPNinja. You could alternatively run a VPN on your seedbox, should you buy one, this is slightly more difficult but it has its benefits. e.g you can manage and delete logs of your online activity.

I actually addressed a question similar to this one a while ago, my answer to that may have been better laid out - so here it is:

Using a seedbox with encrypted FTP traffic alongside a VPN with a forced IP bind would be the most secure option.

What does that mean?

The seedbox concept was already explained above, so there is no need to explain that again.
FTP works in conjunction with the seedbox. You use FTP (File Transfer Protocol), or even SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) to download the files from the seedbox to your PC. This helps to avoid suspicion from your ISP as usually they will not be checking on your FTP traffic, whereas they are constantly on the lookout for P2P and bittorrent traffic.

As I already mentioned, you can purchase a VPN (Virtual Private Network).
When put into place, a VPN encrypts all the traffic that your computer receives and sends. It anonymizes your traffic. You could be downloading torrents, yet to your ISP it will look no different than if you were searching something on Google. It effectively encases all your traffic in a tunnel that cannot be broken.
Most good VPN providers supply their own custom-built software that makes it relatively easy to use the VPN.
If you do not want to pay for a VPN, there are free (slower) alternatives, such as ProXPN .

A "forced IP bind" simply put, means that all traffic, from all applications on your computer, is forced through the VPN, ensuring that everything is anonymized.

I don't want to advertise paid VPN providers, but a quick Google search will come up with tens of thousands of results.

So, in brief:
- Seedbox
- FTP
- VPN

For the most secure solution.

Hope that helped

Good luck, and I hope to see you as an active member of our community soon.

-Pulser

Originally Posted by starplaya

So i'm your stereotypical broke college student looking for the most efficient/safe way to download torrents...

Apparently Pulser types faster than me. So this advice will now be rather repetitive. But just to reinforce that Pulser's advice is right on target.. You should consider becoming a full member of this forum. This site has a lot to offer and it is well worth a few minutes of your time to do that.. All it takes is to fill out a form here

As to your original question.. graphic's advice is good. you might want to take a look at this thread, which asked the same question. And I know that there were at least two or three similar threads recently. FWIW, consider carefully if you want to risk your academic future over some torrents. I know that I wouldn't unless I took every precaution and the risk was almost non-existent. Students sometimes get sanctioned or even expelled over these things.

At a minimum, you need to stop using public torrent trackers. Always use https:// instead of http:// unless it's unavailable. And set your torrent client to use "forced encryption". And to be really secure you also need a seedbox and use SFTP. I'd even go one step farther and find a free VPN as well. The quandry here is that an entry level seedbox will cost you $10 - $15/month. Now I know that you said you were a broke college student. And I have a lot of sympathy for. But I suspect that you could find the $10 - $15 somewhere if it was important to you. And if you really can't.. then you should give up torrenting for a while. It's not worth risking your academic future over.

Thanks for the info guys, it was very helpful. I am going to take everyone's advice and familiarise myself with the site. While I am a broke college student, I do agree that I can afford $10-15 a month if it means keeping me safe. Can you guys recommend the cheapest and most effective vpn and/or seedbox for me to use?

Check out reviews of various seedboxes at Seedbox Reviews and I think a better place to ask that question would be in Seedbox Discussions

I agree with randomguy that the seedbox forum will have a lot more information about seedboxes, including review and member opinions about which ones work well.

And Pulser gave one specific example for a free VPN and Google will point you towards many more.