After the Mullvad fiasco I decided to stop using VPNs all together, since port forwarding is always going to be a problem on all of them, if you read the reasons why Mullvad had to shut down that service.
There is a better way using i2p which conceals your IP and makes it impossible for anyone to know what or if you're downloading at all! No DMCA notices, no problem.
I wrote this small guide to another comment and figured I'd share it in its own post since I'm seeing so many people ask for VPN recommendations.
So there are 2 main implementations of i2p. First is the main Dev’s Java client here https://geti2p.net/en/download
The other is i2pd, which is C++.
I use the Java one personally but both would work. Someone posted back on reddit a guide on /r/i2p for qbittorrent, which is what I use now for this too. The guide was shared as a public torrent you can download with this info hash: 3f1d51095f9b116739172c1bced149acf2b10692
Use that hash with any of the various public trackers and you should be able to download that guide.
But if you just want a basic setup, that Java client comes with i2psnark, which is a Bittorrent client already setup.
The only other thing you want to do is go and search the biggest tracker for stuff, which is called PaTracker, Postman’s tracker. http://tracker2.postman.i2p, only accessible from i2p itself, which you’ll need to have setup and running first to view.
This tracker needs more seeders and uploaders in general, and by improving those things service for everyone is better. So the more the merrier.
Thanks! Feel free to ask any questions, there also might be other people who use i2p now for torrenting. I'm sure they'll help too.
Can you go a bit more into detail what it actually is, what are its advantages and disadvantages and how it works? I find it weird that people are still paying for VPNs if the superior solution that consists of just running this program existed this whole time, there's gotta be a catch that you're not mentioning. What or who exactly guarantees anonymity and safety if using this tool?
I did explain in another comment some general information about I2P. The one where I mention how it is a darknet but is much different than Tor.
The reason many more people don't use it yet is because it is hard to setup. That's pretty much it. Similar to lemmy or other things that exist it is just difficult to get people using it unless it is significantly easier to use.
However, recently things have gotten easier. The dev for i2p has included an easy windows installer for i2p that should make this much better for most users. So some development has happened there.
Also just recently qBittorrent included support for I2P in their latest release. Before that, only 2 Bittorrent clients existed. Now we're up to 3.
The biggest advantage is that you don't need to spend money anymore for a VPN. Or any money for a seedbox either if you have a home computer you can just leave up to seed for you.
The biggest disadvantage is the hard setup and (so far) lack of torrent availability. More stuff is getting added all the time but we need more scene groups adding their releases to i2p (cross-seeding).
Unless you use it for accessing and switching to and from Canadian/UK Netflix or something like that on a Roku or Firestick, I presume.
That is correct. For geoblocked content only available in certain regions, a VPN is still useful. However, much of that content can be obtained through other methods. You could download it and use Plex/Jellyfin to stream it to Roku or Firestick.