Opinion - Best way to Torrent

Alex338

Hi All,

Just wondering what everybody's opinion on the best way to torrent is.

At first I was using the PIA app, which wasn't bad, however I don't really need everything going through PIA (in fact it's kind of annoying), just torrents.  Then one day the app crashed and I didn't notice, and the torrent resumed without the VPN active.  I know I can bind the torrent app to only use the tap driver thingy mabobber, but I realized I would actually just prefer if only the torrents went through the VPN and everything else did not.

So now i'm using Deluge, and have all the proxy stuff set with Socks 5 W/Auth, and also forced inbound and outbound full stream encryption.  This seems to work great, but is it really secure?  I ran all the test torrent files / magnet files that verify your IP within the torrent client and they all check out.  So is that all I need?  

The disadvantage to this method obviously is that I'm still exposed to the torrent site itself (KAT, TPB, etc.)  Does anybody think browsing the torrent sites and downloading the torrent files themselves is a problem?  I've also just used Tor Browser to browse to the sites to download the torrent files, then use Deluge with the encryption and proxy setup.  Is that being overly paranoid?

Thanks!

UltraHumanite

Well it all depends on how paranoid you are and what your concerns are. The proxy and the VPN are two different things so when you say that you'd prefer if only the torrents went through the VPN then your current proxy setup is not doing that.

The proxy that you're using has you covered on the torrent client front so others in the swarm can't ID you, they see the IP of the proxy not your ISP assigned IP. 

The encryption in Deluge should have you covered against your ISP identifying your traffic as P2P, however this depends on how well Deluge handles this aspect of your connection, I'm not sure how well it works so if you aren't either you should definitely look into it.

Since you're using Tor to grab the torrent file you're protected on that front too, from both the torrent site and your ISP, they see the tor not your ISP assigned IP.

I think your setup is okay as far as being effective at obscuring your torrenting activities. However it sounds cumbersome. You might be able to search for your torrents directly in Deluge therefore avoiding to have to use Tor, this might simplify your setup a bit although you should make sure that the searches go over the proxy.

Alex338

Thanks for the reply!!

I understand that the proxy and the VPN are 2 different things, bad choice of words.  It really doesn't matter to me whether or not it's a VPN vs Proxy, as long as it protects my IP, which it seems the proxy is doing, and you affirmed this for me.

I'm still a little confused about the P2P encryption within the torrent client itself.  I have it enabled (forced) and it seems to work fine, but I can't really verify it's actually doing anything.  Also, I've seen comments on other websites mentioning that the encryption is weak - but oh well.

I agree it may be a little cumbersome, but to be honest using Tor browser isn't that bad.  I just have it installed alongside Chrome and Edge, and it seems with every release it gets a little faster and easier to use, so no big deal using it to browse the indexing sites.  To be honest, this setup of Tor browser + Proxy within the torrent client seems (to me) to be the least invasive way of protecting myself.  So I'll stick with it!

Thanks!