I would like to get into torrenting including private trackers, seeding back and all that stuff, while also remaining fairly safe from gov as much as it’s possible.
I have multiple reasons not to torrent at home: the internet at home is really bad and I need to do something about it, but even then, I don’t want to keep my computer running 24/7, especially that I don’t have a very power efficient setup. And I want to seed as much as possible, because I often download obscure files and not many people are seeding… so I want to give back to the community ;).
Another reason is that I don’t have that much storage now and it would be beneficial to rent a seedbox with plenty of storage space. Buying several HDDs would still be cheaper in the long run, but I don’t have anywhere to put them. I don’t have a NAS yet and money to buy one.
I’m afraid that torrenting on a VPS would quickly result in a termination of a deal. And it would be pretty easy to pinpoint who is torrenting. Does anyone have a bad experience with torrenting on a VPS?
Maybe it is possible to connect a VPN to a VPS to add an extra layer of anonymity (privacy?), but that would be an extra cost… so maybe it would be better to live with the risk for a while and save for a NAS and connect a VPN to that?
Hearing about seedboxes I was pretty sure at first that it was all about many people seeding from the same IP, so there is a plausible deniability. But it seems that they are just VPSes with more storage at the expense of performance and with preinstalled software for torrenting. So now I’m even more confused. I also want to host some not piracy-related services in the future, like Grocy and Matrix. Maybe I would just rent another server for these if that was necessary.
I have been pondering about that for a while now and can’t decide. What should I do?
You’re overthinking everything.
Go to your router, turn on qos. I like the cake aqm built into some of the alternative firmwares. Whatever you have is fine though. Now your internet connection quality/speed doesn’t matter and you’ll still be able to use it while torrenting.
Get a computer and put some drives in it. Or attach them to it. Use mergerfs and snapraid. Now you have a seedbox/nas in your house. You can use it with Jellyfin. If you’re worried about the power, use a device called a kill-a-watt to get real numbers, look at your bill and do the math or just trust me that it’s not expensive compared to a remote seedbox.
Subscribe to a vpn service with port forwarding. This is not meant to be super private from the cops, but to obscure your torrenting from the isp/authorities. Windscribe and air are good cheap options.