Well, After hundreds of GB of torrents downloaded, I slipped up. I’ve been changing around linux distros recently and i believe i configured my VPN wrong or forgot to turn it back on after doing something. Well, I finally got hit with a copyright warning. Just your typical “we had to send this” type of warning but none-the-less, I slipped up.

Sharing this because the day before it happened, I read a post about not only having your killswitch on but also binding your client to you vpn interface for situations like this. Needless to say I didn’t take that precaution. For those who are on linux, I found a great post about how to set this up on reddit and wanted to remind people to “double wrap” because why not be safe lol.

The steps were more or less as follows (for QBitTorrent at least):

  1. Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced Settings

  2. Under “Network Interface”, select your vpn interface. To test, check what shows with your vpn on, and then turn it off and re-navigate to this part to see what dissapeared. Thats likely your vpn interface if the name wasn’t clear. (Do not be seeding/downloading torrents while doing this in case).

  3. To test, download a non-copyright torrent like the Ubuntu ISO torrent. In the middle of download, disconnect or close your vpn connection. This should stop the download.

Not sure if reddit links are cool here but here is the guide source if anyones interested. Binding VPN to Torrent Client

Stay hidden!

  • ShepherdPie@midwest.socialEnglish
    4·
    4 days ago

    I’m not sure if this is considered a good practice or not, but what I ended up doing was occasionally torrenting something that was really popular, even if I had no interest in it, just so that I could seed something.

    This is absolutely recommended in order to build ratio. Find and download brand new torrents to get the best chance at upload credit, especially if they’re freeleech files that don’t count toward your download ratio.

    Also every tracker I’ve ever joined has some sort of bonus point system that allows you to buy upload credit and improve your ratio with points earned from seeding, uploading, leaving forum comments, etc.

    I’ve been able to build super high ratios even with garbage upload speeds just by seeding things for a long time to the point that I don’t have to worry about it even with automated downloading via sonarr/radarr.