this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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How to seed safely? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Hey everyone,

I am new to the community and have some questions regarding safely seeding torrents.

  1. When using a seedbox, should I be using a VPN (to access the control panel) on my end at all times? I am worried that the seedbox IP will be discovered by copyright groups and they will figure out who I am by contacting the seedbox provider.

  2. Is it safe to be paying in Bitcoin? I know Monero is the safer option, but I haven't found much support for that and I'm not even sure if the copyright groups will have the means to track Bitcoin anyway.

  3. What can possibly happen assuming I am found to be seeding copyrighted material through a seedbox. Would I just receive a DMCA notice or C&D, or would it be more severe?

  4. Should I lean more towards being paranoid, I am not planning on becoming a big seeder and I'm sure there's bigger fish for these groups to worry about, but you never know what the future holds. Are these groups known to have a lot of resources to track seeders down?

Thanks for any help, and if there's something important that I'm missing, please let me know!

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
  1. It can't hurt (it's a form of defense in depth) but it's unlikely unless you're torrenting ISIS recruitment videos or stolen CIA secrets or something.
  2. Using Bitcoin doesn't help in practice unless you are able to buy the bitcoin anonymously. Most people these days use exchanges that verify your identity. Somebody investigating you can only ask the seedbox for your contact info with a subpoena, and if they get that far, they will just go one extra step to subpoena the exchange you bought the BTC from. (edited to add: a prepaid credit card bought with cash, or cash by mail itself, is probably more anonymous than BTC.)
  3. Depends on jurisdiction, what you are sharing, how litigious the copyright holders are, your prior criminal record, and any number of other factors. Do some research on google for cases in your jurisdiction.
  4. They do have resources, logs about swarms they join, and can act on that in the future even if they don't right away. So it is better to be paranoid than to not be, because a mistake you make now can come to bite you in the future, but being too paranoid isn't likely to be a problem. That said, the risk is minimal for the use cases we talk about here like TV and music.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Alright, thanks for your response, I've bought my Bitcoins from a p2p exchange and haven't had to verify my ID, however I have logged in without a VPN so I'm not sure how much of a threat that is. Is Monero out of the question for most things in this community?

And for context, I am not planning on torrenting anything sketchy like that, just movies and music and maybe some books too.

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

Monero is a fine choice if your VPN provider permits it. Mullvad does and they are highly regarded at the moment. https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2022/5/3/we-now-accept-monero/

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

Yeah, Mullvad is already my VPN of choice, I was referring more towards seedboxes and trackers.

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

Oh yeah, same deal.