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Is a selfhosted VPN viable for piracy? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hey everyone! One of my main issues with piracy in general are VPNs, because I absolutely HATE subscription services.

As far as i'm concerned, we need VPNs so that when torrenting, people cant see our IP adress and other information that can be potentially used againt us. I've heard that there's people who log those IP adresses so that they can like "report" people doing piracy or sth like that. Correct me if i'm wrong.

So, with this purpose in mind, I understand that VPN services are useful because they can help hide our real information. But as I said, I dont like subscription services and I saw that there's the option to selfhost a VPN.

But I thought a bit about it, and, if I'm using a selfhosted VPN using, for example, a raspberry pi or a laptop, isn't the imformation of that laptop ALSO potentially dangerous? Because it is connected to your own ISP and it has the same location as you have (if you set it up at yout home).

I know this may sound dumb, but I don't know much about this. And I can't find information about this.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For reasons already explained by others, a self-hosted VPN for the purpose of hiding torrent traffic is kinda like getting a burner Google phone number but mentioning your real phone number in the voicemail recording. That doesn't mean a self-hosted VPN is useless, though! It would give you remote access to your home network. Take that raspberry pi you mentioned and configure it with pi-Hole for a more private DNS experience. With a self-hosted VPN, you can connect your phone to your home network remotely and get that same DNS protection. Set the laptop up as file storage that you can - after connecting to your home VPN - access from anywhere with an internet connection.

It's not a bad idea, just not the best use-case for this purpose. I personally use ProtonVPN for my bittorrent traffic, and I also have a self-hosted VPN for connecting to my home network while I'm away to access things like my NAS. Subscription services aren't inherently bad - a good VPN service is worth paying a reasonable price for.

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

Yeah I also use ProtonVPN but I use the free version. Which I think blocks P2P connections. It doesn't say so specifically but I've tried and it just doesn't download anything.

I guess I will have to find a way to pay a VPN. If I find one which is trusted and pretty cheap I'll try it.