If you don’t have the money for a proper VPN provider, you definitely don’t have the money for a legal defense if it came to that. Save your money and only begin once you can afford reasonable protections.

I mean you can avoid all that. If you're just interested in music and retro games then just use soulseek and use the rom megathread. both of which are going to be either peer to peer or direct downloads. no torrenting.

Rom megathread (web search it) has quite literally everything. no need to search, no need to torrent, it's all right there. And soulseek with Nicotine+ just works like napster. sign up, be sure to share your music library, and then have at it.

I2p is slow and lacks selection but could work.

Use someone else's wifi.

I used to park my car in a Home Depot parking lot when I went to work with a laptop torrenting until the battery died.

You could also consider looking into a private tracker. It’s not 100% safe but much more safe than a public tracker. It’s also kind of fun getting into it, but hard to get invited.

Look at newsgroups - some indexers are free, others have a lifetime fee that's reasonable. I moved to nzbs and haven't looked back - I can't get dinged for sharing copyrighted stuff if I'm only downloading, never uploading.

You can get into private trackers and trust them. Not recommended, but some do.

Generally speaking, the copyright trolls only target public trackers and DHT. There have been some instances of them making way into TL and others. Your ISP could also identify torrenting on private trackers if they wanted to, even with mitigations. In my experience and from what I hear, most ISPs do not go to these lengths.

So, there a risk doing the above. Whether or not it's worth it until you can afford a decent VPN is up to you.

Aside: Please do not use a free VPN for torrenting (or tor, for that matter). They are either like RiseUp and run on donations for people who really, really need them, or Proton which is commercial and specifically try to block or slow down the traffic. Either way, if ruins it for everyone else.

If you use private trackers, a VPN is irrelevant. All you need to do is fully encrypt your traffic in your torrent client so your ISP can't see what you're doing. It's been working just fine for me for 15 years, and I've never gotten a letter.

An alternative that hasn't been presented yet.

Why not use less well known foreign public trackers? Rutracker has a stupid amount of content, including a lot of niche music content.

If you are worried about Rutracker being too well known, you can try Mazepa Torrent. This is only relevant for movies and shows. Their collection isn't as good as rutracker, but they have most new releases. While the default audio language is Ukrainian, English is always included (this would an issue for non-English language movies/shows, but English subtitles are usually included).

There’s a few free vpn providers out there. You could do a little homework and see if they are a good option. I tend to mistrust free services like that (if I’m not paying, who is, and what are they paying for?), but if you’re in a pinch it’s something to research.

Another option is to look for deals. Sometimes VPN providers will have a super sale a few times a year. I think once I got a NordVPN subscription for THREE YEARS for like $60. It’s more expensive than a single month of anything, yes, but if you can afford a onetime expense it’s nice not to have to worry about a recurring monthly cost.

Your other option is to not use torrents. Usenet is still the grand daddy of file sharing and is pretty much anonymous. Most Usenet hosts are paid, but back in the day even ISPs ran their own servers. It could be worth looking and seeing if there’s any free or low cost providers there.

Tribler or i2p.

Edit: there are also non-bittorrent p2p networks out there like Retroshare, but I haven't used them, so don't know how useful they are.

Borrowed WiFi is definitely your best bet. Find a place with a fast public WiFi network you can reach from your car.

I would prioritize a VPN ahead of an ISP. Free Open/Public APs are not uncommon in my area.

I use Cloudflare Warp and make qbittorrent only able to torrent if it’s connected to Warp

Its being a while for me but windscribe and seedr had totally usable free tiers

Find a friend in a less shit place you can proxy through.

Use torrent over I2P. Qbittorrent can do it.

Doesn't Proton have a free VPN tier? I think it doesn't support port forwarding so your connections would be limited, but that might still work?

Otherwise, check the megathread and go with direct downloads. Those happen over https so completely encrypted.

Mullvad is €5 a month for total of €60 for a year.

Save up then torrent. If you live in the US you risk way more in fines than what €60 for a year of VPN would cost.

You can use torrent to direct link services like seedr.cc, however they have max size limit.

Honest question, why would you need a VPN if you want to download from private trackers?

Usually, copyright owners target people on public trackers and on the DHT. Not a problem if you only get into private trackers.

You can afford AirVPN 💜

It's really that important in the USA? Asking from Europe, where Ivve never even heard of anyone getting fined.

I don't usually recommend this, but since you are in a situation where you really can't afford a VPN or a seedbox and live in a country where torrenting is prosecuted then I think that grants a free pass to abuse the tor network a bit and torrent over tor.

There are some guides online on now to route the traffic, note that it's very easy to leak traffic if you don't know what you're doing. Look for a good guide . I'm guessing the safest way to do it is by using Whonix.

If going that route avoid downloading big torrents if you can find smaller ones or try to search for direct downloads first.

And also, I don't usually say this, but, avoid seeding. Yes leeching is bad, but saturating tor is probably worse I think.

Surprised no one has mentioned using a remote seedbox. There are providers who allow public torrent use, even if some of them discourage it. You can download torrents via a remote server, and then connect to that server via ssh, syncthing or sftp, which are all encrypted, and has the added benefit of giving you a shot at getting into private trackers, if you ever snag an open invite, where having a seedbox is almost essential.

I just do it "raw", using an IP denylist built into my client KTorrent. No problems for a while. But, I mostly do different media than you. (I do TV.)

Move down under to New Zealand - although we do have a 3 strikes law, the clament has to pay all fees upfront to thr ISP and get a court order first...

We mostly raw dog it down here

Paiphon and Windscribe are good. The former gives you unlimited data, while the latter only provides 10 GB per month but has a court tested no logs policy.

Go to the small local library, they usually have free wifi, sometimes without registration and if you're lucky they don't filter any traffic.

There is also a map of open wifi hotspots online which work without registration also, but I'm too lazy to dig out the link.

Ask online for somebody to share their VPN. Many subscriptions explicitly allow inviting friends and family and allow multiple simultaneous connections.

See if Tribler works or fuck it and download anyway.

I’ve been wanting to get into torrenting for a while

Just do it.

I'd go for usenet. Only downloading, no uploading. Torrents are shit.

don't share files, just leech.

use tor

Here's a reliable, free VPN: https://riseup.net/en/vpn

Use a free VPN.