Do VPN's really work?

[demonseed]

Hey Guys
For things like torrents, do VPN's work? are there really free ones that work? whats recommended..?

thanks
Jim

[wesfranks]

Sure they work.... unless the VPN keeps logs of their (and therefore, your) network activity. Then you are just one more hop away from being found out. Most have to maintain their logs a certain amount of time by law. Better read their privacy agreements and hope they stick by them, even when sued. Most say they require at least a "john doe" warrant for the information, but some don't even need that amount of prodding to give you up. Get a free one, and they have even less incentive.

Or.... you could do something that opens your information up such as a browser plug-in or the like. I used to use an Onion Router (TOR) many years ago with a clean install of Firefox. Even then you had to watch what you were doing. Enter a captcha to prove you are human and you expose yourself. Of course there are ways around that too. For the captcha problem, you just pay "elves" in another part of the world pennies to the thousand captcha entries, so their IP gets exposed- not yours. 

Seedboxes, same problem as VPNs. You have to pay somehow and that is always tracked.

Oh, and just know that unless you have an end-to-end encryption solution, your ISP will always know what you are doing. Those wires have to start and stop somewhere. 

And I hope you didn't Google anything conspicuous. It's always the search history that gives you away. Kind of fits the definition of "intent" and "pre-meditation".

Some say the odds are on your side, but don't do anything too crazy. 

Good talk. That was fun. <puts tin-foil hat back on>

BTW, there's probably something important that I forgot. There always is...

[gigapig]

I've been Reading (listening really) this 

Truly scary and tricky to hide yourself.

Also started using DuckDuckGo thanks to this book.

What normally happens (at least in the UK) is a anti piracy  agency will look for IP addresses which are sharing certain content. Once they have the ip address they will then contact the ISP of that IP address and you may then get a letter.

Quote

Virgin Media, along with other internet service providers, is supporting the Get It Right from a Genuine Site campaign – a government-backed initiative that helps people access the content they want from legitimate sources.

The Get It Right from a Genuine Site campaign has contacted us on behalf of owners of copyrighted material, who believe their content may have been shared using your internet account without their permission. The content could be anything that is copyrighted, such as films, TV shows, sports events or music.

This is the first time an educational email has been sent to you. It will help you find genuine content and prevent the sharing of copyrighted material on your account in the future, as well as explaining why you are being contacted and what it means.

 

_______________

A summary of the information that the Get It Right from a Genuine Site campaign has provided to Virgin Media:

Copyright Infringement Report ID ****************
Title of content shared: BREAKING BAD
Time file was shared: 10:16 *
Date content was shared: 17/07/2017

 

[demonseed]

Hey,

Thanks.