I'm brand new to torrenting and was looking to pirate some audiobooks off AudiobookBay. I followed the Wispy Docs Torrent Client Guide on VPN Binding Mullvad VPN with qBittorrent. (I know Mullvad isn't ideal but I want to use up my pre-existing subscription.)

My concern is that in Mullvad's BitTorrent guide (no longer maintained) they suggest the following additional changes:

Enable anonymous mode.
Disable DHT
Disable PeX
Disable Local peer discovery
Select TCP as Peer connection protocol

I tried searching on Reddit if I should follow any of these settings changes but people were very unclear. Some said they're outdated because "private trackers yada yada" (I'm new so am unfamiliar with the reasoning) but I'm not sure if that applies to my situation.

I already tested with torrent IP checkers and the binding seems to have worked. What else (if anything) should I be doing?

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[–] black0ut@pawb.social 7 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Keep in mind that:

Anonymous mode doesn't really do anything, but it also doesn't hurt having it on.
Disabling DHT and PeX will make you unable to download torrents from certain platforms, like TPB, unless they are also registered in other trackers.

In addition, I'd also set it to only allow encrypted connections, which for some reason they don't say there.

Either way, Mullvad is not a good VPN for torrenting, because it can't do port forwarding anymore. You already know this, but you'll have a lot of issues with low torrent availability, low speeds and a difficulty to seed.

If you already don't mind paying for a VPN, why not look into seedboxes? They also hide your IP when torrenting, they can have port forwarding and better speeds than your VPN or home internet, they're online 24/7 so you can seed a lot, and you can connect to them with a VPN to get the torrented files if you really want.

Additionally, you can also buy a VPN with port forwarding and bind only your torrent client to it, so that no other traffic or information is flowing through it. This works if you don't trust any VPN offering port forwarding.

If you want an explanation on the private tracker logic: Private trackers usually have requirements to join. That way, companies can't plant fake seeds that identify you and snitch to the ISP. They're also relatively small, so not closely monitored. When you get a torrent from a private tracker, DHT, PeX and local peer discovery are disabled on that torrent. As long as you have encryption enabled, you'll be relatively safe from ISP letters. However, this only applies if you're getting your torrents only from private trackers.

[–] mystify@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 hours ago

I’d also set it to only allow encrypted connections, which for some reason they don’t say there.

Interesting, I don't believe that's mentioned in the first guide either. I'll look into that, thanks!

If you already don’t mind paying for a VPN, why not look into seedboxes?

I'll look into that, though I already require a VPN service for other purposes and having two subscriptions might be out of my budget. In fact I was even considering downgrading from Mullvad to Protons' free VPN tier as even 1 VPN subscription stings me, but of course that also doesn't support port forwarding.

I wish I could use I2P but I heard it's rare to find torrents there. If only everyone switched, we could do away with paid VPN requirements.

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