What is the most secure method?

[fritz43]

Please rate the following methods of downloading, from most secure to least secure: eMule with obfuscation, BitComet with PeerBlock, alt.Binz with PeerBlock, Usenet with PeerBlock. I would like to settle on one type.

Also, how useful are utilities such as MaskMyIP.

Many thanks in advance for your response(s).

fritz

[anon]

You don't need Peerblock for Usenet. No distributed connections nor uploading are required, and that makes it safer than any P2P system in principle. Also, alt.binz is a newsreader, so there's essentially no difference between the last two choices.

[megabyteme]

It might also be good to identify what it is you are "securing" from. ISP? NSA? Copyright Trolls? Mom? Other?...

If you are worried about "securing" your entire connection, you may wish to do so full-time with a VPN.

[Skiz]

I never felt the need to secure anything at all. In all my years, from Napster to present, Ive never gotten so much as one of those famous letters that used to be sent out. Do they even look for downloaders anymore or has the hunt moved to uploaders?

[away]

tbh most of those `famous letters' depend on your isp's and i know mine do crack down on torrents, this is why i download mine remotely *if* i ever need to use one, never had a problem with usenet though i assume because your not uploading with loads of peers etc

[megabyteme]

I never felt the need to secure anything at all. In all my years, from Napster to present, Ive never gotten so much as one of those famous letters that used to be sent out. Do they even look for downloaders anymore or has the hunt moved to uploaders?

I have. The common denominator among them was that they were all high-budget bombs. The kind of show you only reluctantly grab only because it's free. I believe each of my letters involved Adam Sandler late in his "career".

I do not use any kind of protection, but I do automatically "pull out" after 125% upload. Have not gotten bothered since. The letters all included seed time, as well as the amount of data uploaded. I'm not spending any extra money on a VPN, but also not trying to be a super-seeding cawk, either.

I do avoid non-private trackers. Iff I absolutely need a file off of some place public, I H&R immediately.

Basically, I just use my pre-married secks techniques.

[LemOnzoo]

Seedbox is safe. You can use it to download from public torrents, and after you can grabb from box directly or with some client like filezilla.

[piercerseth]

As anon said usenet is so asymmetrical that anything beyond SSL on your downstream is overkill. Uploading is a totally different beast.

Unlike meg, I prefer the rhythm method* when slumming it on public trackers.





*proxy

[teflon05]

I never felt the need to secure anything at all. In all my years, from Napster to present, Ive never gotten so much as one of those famous letters that used to be sent out. Do they even look for downloaders anymore or has the hunt moved to uploaders?

Same here, & I used to upload my own content like a mad bastard to Demonoid. Almost 2 TB of content. There's still a few of my uploads floating around on there from around 2004. I never used VPN, or Peerguardian or any of that crap & never got so much as a warning. Most of that was with Verizon, although I don't know if that had anything to do with it...

I'm with Comcast now though, & right after I made the switch I picked up a server for torrents. Heard too many horror stories about Comcast & torrents. I do still DL directly over my home connection occasionally though, but for some reason I never seem to get very good upload amounts. I don't know if I have a setting wrong in the client or it's Comcast messing with things, but since I don't do it that often, I haven't investigated it too closely.

[fritz43]

Thanks, guys for your thoughts. I've been on Usenet for ages, never a problem. Then I discovered torrents (BitComet) and, especially eMule. I collect music and have found some amazingly obscure stuff on Em. Then, a couple of weeks ago I got emails from Comcast about 2 albums that were torrents. Get this: I got one email for *each* of the songs on the 2 albums.

I immediately shut down my 24/7 eMule feed and resolved to only use BC to dl TV shows I can't get on my cable (also Comcast). Usenet I will never give up.

A buddy of mine swears that the only time he got warning emails was when he forgot to load PeerBlock first (and he was on BitComet). Don't know if I believe that or not. To me, at this point, Usenet is the safest, then eMule (obfuscated), then BitComet or uTorrent, used with Peerblock (maybe).

Also, PeerBlock has now divided into free (periodic updates) and paid (frequent updates). Have yet to decide about that. fritz