Depends on what you want. For games, find a trustworthy repacker (fitgirl and dodi are good in my experience) and only download from them. For software, again, it depends. For adobe products, M0nkrus is pretty good, but I'm unsure about other software. Movies and music are typically quite safe as long as you practice due diligence (basically dont open a file called song.mp3.exe).
this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Simple, trust no one. Get a no-reported-logs VPN, don't download anything that has a strange file size or extension, look at comments, look at the number of seeders if it's a torrent. If you can, join something like a private tracker where there's moderation too. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it's probably not the movie you were looking for and there might be a Trojan army inside waiting for you to let the duck enter your computer... That metaphor may have fallen apart on me...
VPN providers don't protect you from malware.
I was trying to give general advice, since it didn't sound like they had a trusted private tracker already it's a good idea to have a VPN to mask your IP. I agree, it probably won't help against malware.
Get a no-reported-logs VPN
lol there is no such thing. use tor
Piracy using TOR is extremely slow and not really anonymous
maybe 5 years ago
Slowness and bandwith limitations are still an issue and it's likely that they will always be. It's already too slow to torrent large files over Tor and it also takes away the bandwith of other users. Tor also still doesn't support UDP connections, which may cause data leaks.
I added the word "reported" because I don't trust VPN providers to not keep logs, but ideally they should report that they don't keep logs and have an established history of not providing logs. Tor is really not ideal if you're trying to download anything large and you're still vulnerable depending on who controls the exit nodes.
Mullvad I think is very good for this. They have an extensive description of their no-logs policy on their site, and have also been raided by the police before, who apparently were unable to find any customer information.
Shenanigans are always possible of course so you shouldn't 100% blindly trust anyone, but all the available evidence seems to point to them being pretty legit IMO.
I'd avoid any websites containing the string google.
Surface the Web with VPN, Ad blocker, Anti-Tracker, use Linux. In 5 years, I have never encountered a virus or a trojan. Following these 4 "rules" and you'll be fine on any website.
If you want to go one step further, isolate/sandbox your media player, browser and torrenting apps in firejail.
Really extreme, but good to know. 😉