Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

May also want to try !seedboxes@lemmy.dbzer0.com and !seedboxes@reseed.it

Whatbox (and a few other seedbox companies) offer seedboxes in the US. How can they do that without being immediately shut down? Do they have some kind of restrictions that could cause problems with using a US-hosted seedbox?

AFAIK they do honor DMCA removal requests so if you happen to load a public torrent there & receive a notice Whatbox staff will ask you to delete that data. You could contact their support on that if you're not sure on their procedure.

How safe is paying via your real payment details?

I've only used crypto for those things. But presumably if you find a pre-paid credit card they accept you could buy it with cash & then pay the seedbox provider with that.

How safe is connecting via your real IP

The seedbox service itself is essentially a VPN so you either trust it, or you don't. You could just as well ask how safe is it to connect to your VPN, or if you need to use another VPN to connect to your VPN :P

One thing to keep in mind is that seedbox services probably do log more data than the typical no-log VPN.

I'm definitely not an expert, but I've been using Whatbox for many years without any issues. I'm based in the US and have it set up to autocharge the same card that I use for everything else. I do not use a VPN or anything else to access Whatbox.

I have received plenty of DMCA notices from Whatbox over the years, and they just require you to delete the offending content within 24 hours or your account will be locked until you do.

In fact, I vaguely recall them increasing my storage allowance a few years ago without raising my rate, so that was pretty cool.

Update: Decided to not bother with the extra caution, just use my real IP and payment details.

I used a seedbox some time ago to download a specific big torrent (at the time). I payed using Paypal, as I don't consider seedboxes a low-hanging-fruit for rightsholders to persecute at the moment.

There's too much redundant data on these services, so if they takedown one user's data, there's still lots of the same torrented data on other user's. I don't think rightsholders are willing to play wack-a-mole for such infractions.

They'd rather invest their resources on more centralized file sharing, such as big public torrent sites and cyberlockers.

I unfortunately, do not have an answer for you but curious what issues you have with crypto. I am an old fart who does not sail the seas as much as I used to and do not do any sort of crypto or even considered it.