A lot of my files were shitty 480p versions of movies from the Napster days. Now they’re all 1080p, with a few 720p exceptions (mainly tv series episodes). All in all 500 something files in total. Now just watching uTorrent slowly download them all. Hopefully my VPN keeps the eyes off of me…
You re-downloaded your media to get better quality files.
I re-downloaded my media because I misconfigured Radarr.
We are not the same.
Also, pro-tip: When configuring Radarr (or Sonarr for that matter), be sure to define a recycle bin.
I woke up the next morning with all my media wiped. That was in June/July. I’m still recovering.
Now just watching uTorrent slowly download them all. Hopefully my VPN keeps the eyes off of me…
- qbittorrent is better in many many ways compared to utorrent and hasa very similar interface. qbit is open-source, utorrent isn’t. qbit doesn’t have ads or malware, utorrent has or has had both many times. qbit allows you to bind to a specific network interface (e.g. you VPN connection instead of regular ethernet one) which offer better protection if your vpn drops. feel free to do your own research here or elsewhere on the web if you doubt any of my points.
- if your VPN is a free one, that wont protect you at all. those guys will squeal and turn over server logs with ip address at the drop of a hat. Even a lot of paid-for VPNs are shitty lying bastards. So picking a good vpn can be challenging there are probably posts here covering recommendations but generally you want ones that have either been taken to court and were unable to provide logs OR ones that have been audited by a respected 3rd party firm that can confirm they are truly a “no log VPN”. I can recommend PIA, NordVPN, and Mullvad as some ones that are highly unlikely to turn over any logs (bc they don’t have them) but there are others and doing your own research isn’t a bad thing. The site torrentfreak.com does an article once a year or so that covers a few of the more popular VPNs and different aspects of thier privacy but they don’t declare a “best vpn”, just rate them on varius privacy and security aspects.
- Even if you have a good VPN, check that you aren’t leaking your real IP via dns lookups: ipleak.net or dnsleaktest.com
- Check that you torrent client set up not to leak: search for ‘torrent ip leak test’ and do one of the torrent ip leak tests. ipleak.net hasone of these if you scroll down on the page; look for “Torrent Address detection” and click “Activate” button and it will give a magnet link to start test with
- additionally, you can set up a “vpn killswitch” to prevent traffic from going over regular internet if you vpn drops. If you using qbit, this probably isn’t strictly required but many people here like to have this as an additional safety. i can’t really provide details on this bc the process varies widely. A lot of VPN client apps have this feature built in. But even if they don’t, you can set something like this up in most firewalls but exact steps will vary depending on OS (Windows/Linux/Mac) and which firewall you are using (or I guess whether or not you even have one installed).
you can set up a “vpn killswitch” … A lot of VPN client apps have this feature built in.
Most quality VPNs will have a killswitch built in and enabled automatically, with nothing to setup, but they are notoriously unreliable and can fail. The key term people want to search for is “bind.” You want to bind qBit to your VPN. If your VPN isn’t working, qBit doesn’t have a connection. Most decent, privacy first, “no log” VPNs (Mullvad, Proton, AirVPN, iVPN, etc.) will provide instructions on binding. This is above and beyond their built-in killswitch.
I can recommend PIA, NordVPN
I’m not saying you shouldn’t recommend these, or that people shouldn’t use them, but IMO, people should at least be warned to search for the following, so they can make an informed decision:
- “kape technologies malware” (Kape owns Private Internet Access, which is why I switched to Mullvad years ago when Kape bought PIA)
- “nordvpn data breach”
Most quality VPNs will have a killswitch built in and enabled automatically, with nothing to setup, but they are notoriously unreliable and can fail.
Fair. I do all of my setup manually these days (networkmanager on linux, openvpn client app on the rare occasion i’m on windows, not a mac guy so no clue there). I implement one using a firewall but that is more complex than most people want. Still, as long as it is done in addition to the qbit network interface bind, then it’s not bad to also set a VPN killswitch.
The key term people want to search for is “bind.” You want to bind qBit to your VPN.
Agreed. This is what I was referencing in the first bullet about network interface
I’m not saying you shouldn’t recommend these, or that people shouldn’t use them, but IMO, people should at least be warned to search for the following, so they can make an informed decision:
1 - Fair points. TBH, I had my doubts about that initially but have been with them the whole time (before and after kape acquisition). FWIW, I have not seen any change in PIA service quality. In fact, I have seen them add Wireguard support and release all of the code as FOSS (see here). I agree that Kape did some sketchy shit in the past but from what I have seen over the last several years, they are not doing anything sketchy in the VPN/technology sector part of their business (aside from maybe advertising which I consider to be separate). I don’t even really think about Kape anymore tbh. If they were ratting me out, I would have had enough dcma notices to start a bonfire with by now.
2 - I had not been aware of that. I haven’t used them in a few years. Any sort of data breach definitely sounds bad but since I haven’t reviewed the details, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions either.
I like Mullvad from a tech and privacy standpoint but IMO they are a bit on the expensive side compared to some of the other options. Nord and PIA you can usually get multiyear deals on periodically and that can drastically lower the overall cost ($80 for a 3yr VPN plan = monthly about 2.22 USD/2.04 euro vs 5 euro/month for mullvad). Not saying price is the be-all-end-all or that Mullvad is unaffordable but it is going to be a consideration for many, especially people that already don’t want to shell out for a paid VPN over the free ones. With that in mind, I think there is still value in PIA (and possibly Nord - I haven’t reviewed the details of what exactly was breached - e.g. vpn service vs blog server vs etc, what data was exposed, what steps they took to address, etc). There are many other no-logs vpn options besides Nord, PIA, and Mullvad out there, I just don’t have any personal experience with them.
I have qBit bound to my VPN (Nord), but it basically stops every few minutes. So I had to stop and use killswitch.
This, I think, is actually an issue with qBit. But maybe it only ever happens to me.
every few minutes is a lot. havent been on nord for a few years but even when i was on them i dont remember getting drops that frequently. i suspect it is likely not an issue with qbit as many others use it without running into drops like that - including myself.
probably an issue with either nord or your isp. if you are on wifi, there are also some routeres with known issues when it comes to dropping wifi signal - but there’s too many different models and firmware versions to really guess this accurately without detailed info (and sometimes it only happens in specific versions of firmware on specific routers).
i get occasional drops on PIA but its usually after running for something like 3-7 days straight. i’m not using the official pia client app but instead download manual ovpn file configurations from pia and import them into generic client. under windows, you need the openvpn free community client for this. under linux, you can import them into networkmanager. iirc, nord has manual ovpn files too but they make you select a specific server and download 1 config file at a time.
alternately, if you setup wireguard that might also work better but haven’t tested myself
I used Nord proxies when I still used uTorrent, never had issues. I’m definitely hardwired, and my isp is shit, don’t get me wrong, but the only change I can see is qBit and proxies. I tried every server they had available, and the issue just stops when I don’t use their proxies. Maybe I should try proxies from some other service, but I’m not really in a place to shop around… and I don’t know that free vpn services have proxies that you can try.
I also say “stops every few minutes”, I should clarify, it stops and doesn’t resume. I have to close qbit and reopen.
I don’t know enough about ovpn or wireguard to know how that would help me… Is that not a VPN/tunneling that you have to have both sides to use? So I would go to a server that has another VPN running on anyways?
I don’t know enough about ovpn or wireguard to know how that would help me…
OpenVPN and Wireguard are different protocols that VPN providers can use. Technically, there are also groups and client apps of the same name for both too. I think there are other protocols too (pretty sure there’s one called IPsec and maybe some others) but OpenVPN and Wireguard are 2 of the most common. Wireguard is newer and generally is regarded as faster than OpenVPN protocol but there are some privacy issues with it if using the unmodified version. Some VPN companies use a modified version of WG that address those issues (Nord and PIA). But since customers can’t inspect the server configs, I would definitely recommend only using VPN companies that have undergone a third party audit to confirm that they keep no logs and have a server configuration without privacy issues (off my head: PIA, Nord, Mullvad, expressvpn, surfshark, cyberghost).
Is that not a VPN/tunneling that you have to have both sides to use?
Yes, if your VPN provider doesn’t have servers configured with Wireguard, then you can’t use it. And even if they do, it probably won’t be all the servers so you need to choose one with it. So if say your provider was Nord. Nord calls their modified WG as “NordLynx”.
If you wanted to connect to Nord’s WG (aka NordLynx) servers, AFAIK you have to use the official Nord client app. Some providers might release a WG config file that you could use to manually set it up but last time I checked Nord only offers manual config files for OpenVPN (here’s an old reddit thread basically saying the same thing). This is annoying if you are trying to have a setup where you can switch between multiple providers and protocols easily (like me) or in places where you can’t install client software (like routers) but probably not a big deal to most users connecting from a computer/tablet/phone/etc.
For PIA, it is similar although they don’t rename their Wireguard as something else. But again, they don’t provide manual WG configs and you have to use their official app to use it. However, they do have some github repos and more technical users can run some scripts to generate temporary manual configs (my understanding is that unlike the OpenVPN manual configs, these will eventually expire and you will need to rerun the scripts again at some later time).
I used Nord proxies when I still used uTorrent, never had issues. I’m definitely hardwired, and my isp is shit, don’t get me wrong, but the only change I can see is qBit and proxies. I tried every server they had available, and the issue just stops when I don’t use their proxies. Maybe I should try proxies from some other service, but I’m not really in a place to shop around… and I don’t know that free vpn services have proxies that you can try.
Not sure. Hard to debug without concrete details and I’m probably not the best for that anyway. Could be proxies; I connect to vpn servers but not via socks proxies so not sure how those are different speed wise.
If not that, could be qbit settings or version (several years ago some various builds of qbit could be hit or miss but I thought that was more or less done with nowadays). If you are interested in working it out, my recommendation would be to take some screenshots of qbit settings. Then create a post asking about improving qbit speeds and also list a) who the vpn provider is - nord or whatever you use now, b) how you are connecting - nord app or proxy url etc, c) if you are testing with same torrent in each, then what kind of approx numbers you are seeing in qbit and what you expect based on network test. That would probaby be enough info for folks to help you get it sorted and would be a good resource for anybody else having similar troubles.
NordVPN also doesn’t have port forwarding so you’re unlikely to be able to seed anything back. This’ll get you banned from private trackers and goes against the whole concept of torrenting.
Yeah, Mullvad stopped offering Port Forwarding as well, along with iVPN (I think) and some others. I believe AirVPN is the recommended VPN which still has PF (I may have iVPN and Air mixed up). I understand one of the reasons why they stopped supporting PF (it allowed sick f*cks to share illegal child content with others), but it also pretty much destroyed my ability to find and complete a download of old/er files that I normally didn’t have a problem with, and, like you mentioned, I could no longer seed back. It’s the sole reason why I started using usenet. I could have tried one of the other VPNs I mentioned (Proton & Air, which I believe both have PF) but I chose to stick with Mullvad and add usenet instead, which I’ve really liked.
Yes I was actually sad to leave Mullvad, and the developer was pretty cool about giving refunds, so I’d definitely go back if things changed in the future.
AirVPN does have port forwarding and is what I wound up switching to. So far, everything is working fine and there are a decent number of servers available.
People still use that malware of a client???
uTorrent 2.2.1 Build 25154 is good. There’s a few builds of uTorrent that are fine.
But yeah, qbittorrent is the default “why didn’t you use it?” client.
It’s good in the sense that it’s the last version before it got enshittified by ads, but the now nearly-legendary v2.2.1 is also 5 years behind in security patches. It was an awesome, fast, stable client and I miss it, but I don’t think it’s worth the risk. Like you and everyone else has been saying, OP should be using Qbittorent.
You really shouldn’t use uTorrent. There are a number of safer and better open source alternatives out there.
And all of that wouldnt be possible if you legally purchased all of this
Where can you forever-download these movies with no DRM?
You rip the physical media.
Do you always rip it at max quality, indefinitely keep the physical copy, or repurchase it years later when you want higher quality?
Depends.
I only rip music cds as the file size isnt as big as with DVDs or BDs.
But I keep them indefinitely.
that would take me awhile. im up to ~30,000 episodes of ‘shows’ and 2,500 movies
ive been recently doing the same…grabbing the 4k versions of stuff that matters.
my fav config is gluetun+deluge for a containerized seedbox
