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I Know What You Download (via torrent)

I guess this settles it for me. What VPN should I go for?

130 comments
  • Meanwhile me, who is behind so many layers of badly configured ISP NAT that there's no way anyone knows exactly what computer is downloading what: 😈

  • This legitimately is only showing me Linux ISOs... Huh... Guess I'm good to go then!

  • It is always a joy to see what my virtual neighbors download... Some have a very refined... Taste.

  • Results my vary in accuracy due to the nature of dynamic, Shared, or incorrectly assigned IP Addresses.

    Also

    Results only included from Public trackers, private trackers do not show up.

  • I've been using mullvad for a few years—since PIA got bought out—and would recommend it if you're concerned about trust.

    So, using a VPN doesn't actually eliminate all possibility of being tracked. All you're doing is replacing who can potentially see all of your data, from your ISP to the VPN provider, so trust is actually a pretty important factor.

    When I switched the consensus at the time was that mullvad was the most true to its privacy statement, i.e. trustworthy. A lot of other vpns are cheaper or have more bells and whistles, but have histories of data breaches or scandals, are based in countries with weak privacy/strong surveillance laws, or are owned by companies that may have an interest in the customers data (like with the PIA acquisition I mentioned).

    Mullvad too has had a few incidents where they were served court orders to provide data to the police, but iirc no data was ever actually given up. Plus, they allow a bunch of different privacy-centric payment methods, including just sending cash in an envelope.

    I'd recommend taking a look at some more recent discussions comparing VPNs but I think considering mullvad is a good place to start.

    • since PIA got bought out

      For what it's worth, I opted to wait until I had my first issue with PIA after the buyout to switch and it just never really happened. I've remained on PIA for my sea-sailing needs, and still haven't had an ISP email or other problem with them, other than the client being a little janky on occasion.

      I'm not an active advocate or anything, but my experience is that they're still good enough, even years after the acquisition. Perhaps they're using the data for something behind the scenes, but it's cheap and keeps my ISP off my back. I'd at least still consider it in the "good enough for this purpose" category.

  • I’ll admit, this spooked me, but for different reasons than the OP and most comments.

    I didn’t recognize any of the downloads, even though I have a publicly routable static IP and don’t use a VPN (I have a domain and self host so I know my IP hast changed in years).

    I use exclusively private trackers, and nothing I’ve actually downloaded showed up, and the things that did were sporadic—one every couple days or so, first/last seen times identical, random torrents. I started asking myself if I had a rogue device in my network, so I checked logs and stats—nothing unusual (I think…I hope…hard to tell sometimes).

    I looked more into how this site tracks peers, and it seems they have different levels of confidence. Their first API tier (peer API) is a “best guess” and this is based on listening to the DHT and PeX networks for their known torrents. I’m guessing their website uses this or a combination of this with their other APIs. I looked at my torrent config and saw I hadn’t disabled DHT/PeX and had a couple idle public torrents.

    Not positive on this, but I think there can be false positives if your torrent box participates in DHT/PeX even if it doesn’t actually download said torrents. Can anyone confirm this?

  • Heads up, this website doesn't get data on stuff you download from private trackers, only public.

  • Huh, my page is empty.

    Put one in the win column for Surfshark. (and a tip of the hat to TopCashBack, who is rebating me 80-90% of my recent 2 year renewal)

130 comments