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.
I2p is not a substitution for a proxy. I2p is an end-to-end encryption Network and unless it’s changed over the past couple of years it’s incredibly slow for any multimedia transfer. Coupled on top of that you have to have the knowledge to be able to set up your full system to route all traffic through it. So using it as a a security step for most people is already out of the question. It’s not like a VPN where you can just plug and play. Having your entire network communicate through l2p is going to make everything substantially slower.
I’ll read up on this. It’s new for me and thr first time hearing of it, but we should always consider working alternatives
I have never used i2p but isn’t it pretty slow? I only have experience with Tor and it’s not recommended to torrent through Tor. I did listen to the interviews of both Tor and i2p on a Privacy podcast but it was a while back
Could you add a block about I2P in general?
There’s an i2p lemmy community, feel free to join us there. i2p
I2P is a darknet similar to Tor in some ways, but it is perfectly legal and safe to use depending on what you’re doing on it, of course.
It is used for regular browsing and running services on. People setup hidden services like websites or mail servers or anything on it really. Lemmy could theoretically be hosted over I2P as well, it just wouldn’t federate properly with these ones on the clearnet.
Any other info you would want included? I2P can get pretty in depth but that’s my basic understanding of what I use it for.
I2P is a darknet similar to Tor in some ways, but it is perfectly legal and safe to use depending on what you’re doing on it, of course.‘’
TOR is completely legal and safe to use depending on what you are doing as well. Let’s not demonize the service due to a few bad actors.
I’m looking up I2P vs VPN and people are saying that I2P cannot replace VPN but I fail to understand why. Can I get some more insight to that?
I2p is a closed network where everyone participates and using cryptography packets are encrypted so so only the destination can reason them. All packets are sent through short lived tunnels which are connections of various nodes in the network that change at every so often.
You traffic never hits the main internet. Its a full darknet with a torrent network system , email, websites, private encrypted messaging and more built on top of it.
So they are all encrypted. Nobody knows the IP of anyone else
What mullvad fiasco??
I wouldn’t call it a “fiasco”, but they’re disabling port-forwarding for everyone on July 1st. They say it’s because people are hosting “unfavorable” content and it’s getting their IPs banned. Their article
Doesn’t this make every user the equivalent of a Tor exit node? Meaning you’ll have possibly dodgy traffic appearing to come from your internet service?
No. I2P works differently than Tor. There are no exit nodes, because there are no exits. I2P is separate from all clearnet traffic. For example, you cannot browse reddit.com from within i2p, like you can with tor.
It’s a entirely different protocol then? That’s smart actually. I need to look into it.
Completely different protocol, yep. Has nothing to do with Tor really. The only similarity is that both are ‘darknets’
I had never heard of it! Thx for the tip
