Do I really need a VPN for pirating?

VitabytesDev@feddit.nl to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 50 points –

OK, so, I have a couple of questions:

  • What's the worst that can happen if I don't use a VPN while pirating?
  • Are free tier VPNs (like Proton VPN) good enough?
  • I don't want to pay much or anything for a VPN, is a way I can get a good free one, or set one myself somehow (I have experience with selfhosting) ?
  • If not, which cheap one do you recommend?

EDIT: I pirate mostly movies, and rarely some TV series.

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Look in a Debird service. And pay with crypto.Then you are completely anonymous. All torrenting is done far from you and sent back over https.

Cryptocurrency is not necessarily anonymous. Buying bitcoin from a broker leaves a record connecting your payment method to your wallet. Even if you mine them yourself, doesn't your IP address show up on the public ledger? I guess if you somehow bought bitcoin in cash...

Is there a more private cryptocurrency I'm not considering?

I consider it more private than like a credit card at least your name's not attached to it.

And if you really want to you can just use a credit card at an on-ramp exchange, then take that and swap it for a different crypto on a exchange that doesn't require any registration. Then it becomes effectively completely anonymous.

Monero is the private one. But also if you transfer your broker gotten bitcoins to another bitcoin wallet there is no evidence that that belongs to you. You can have sent them to someone else.

IPs do not show in any ledgers

Internet without VPN is like sending all your things on postcards instead of in envelopes in the mail. Yea https and more mitigate a lot but still.