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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ @lemmy.dbzer0.com

2y ago

Stop relying on VPNs - Just use your computer with i2p

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.

138 comments

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.
- You don't need to route all traffic, just the traffic from your bittorrent client.
  Download speeds have improved significantly as there are more people on there seeding than ever.
  i2p is significantly better than a proxy, you jump through multiple hosts/tunnels before reaching the service.
  Also it isn't all network traffic at all, just services connecting through i2p like a web browser you have setup to use it.
  
  Doesn't this still have the same vulnerability of the potential for a hostile takeover similar to tor? Also, is there any way to use i2p to bypass geoblocking? If not that's a major reason why I and many people use vpns.
  
  And what do I gain with this over having my torrent client bound to a wireguard interface running through a commercial VPN provider?
  
  Can you only seed to people on i2p?
  
  But the multiple jumps make it very slow.
  There's a reason we want port forwarding for near direct connections for torrenting.

I'm skeptical of changing what works. Haven't had any issues with the VPN I use. I'll keep this in mind for sure nonetheless.
- Honestly that is fine. Just consider this to be one of the times you hear about I2P. I also don't typically start paying much attention to something unless I've heard it like 3 or more times.

What Mullvad fiasco? I'm still using them :|
- It's not really a fiasco at all. OP seems to be blowing it way out of proportion. For the vast majority of users it's not a big deal at all. They are disallowing port forwarding due to how many letters/threats they've gotten from their datacenters and law enforcement.
  
  This is very annoying, because it makes it hard for other peers to connect with my server and it will make it harder to seed. This is bad, I will likely switch next year.
  
  It's only a big deal if you seed, and being on c/piracy, you should be upset about this unless you're just a leecher.
- Mullvad stopped port forwarding due to being harassed by law enforcement agencies.
  
  What about port forwarding opens Mullvad up to more scrutiny from law enforcement?

I2pd + Qbittorrent is the best solution. Simple to setup and works great, the only catch is that right now you need to use the Qbittorrent alpha version (because it has i2p support) or just wait for the release.
Highly recommend experimenting with i2p, there's cool stuff on it as well!
And if more people join i2p to torrent the faster the speeds will get. You are a seeder of the i2p network basically. (Which is great!)
- BiglyBT: A Feature-Rich bittorrent client including I2P support and the unique ability to “Bridge” regular torrents in-to I2P so people can download them anonymously.
  source
- Absolutely agree. I setup qBittorrent to use it and my experience has been great once everything is setup to work, which I'll admit was tricky trying to use the latest alpha release. Using i2psnark is much easier for most folks for now I think.

Fuck, this is how I find out Mullvad is dropping support for port forwarding.
I already have a protonmail account, guess I'll get the VPN too now. My entire setup relies on using wireguard on the firewall level, so another solution like i2p won't work
- That's fair. I like proton : )

That's the moment when lemmy became more relavant than reddit to me.

Can you go a bit more into detail what it actually is, what are its advantages and disadvantages and how it works? I find it weird that people are still paying for VPNs if the superior solution that consists of just running this program existed this whole time, there's gotta be a catch that you're not mentioning. What or who exactly guarantees anonymity and safety if using this tool?
- I did explain in another comment some general information about I2P. The one where I mention how it is a darknet but is much different than Tor.
  The reason many more people don't use it yet is because it is hard to setup. That's pretty much it. Similar to lemmy or other things that exist it is just difficult to get people using it unless it is significantly easier to use.
  However, recently things have gotten easier. The dev for i2p has included an easy windows installer for i2p that should make this much better for most users. So some development has happened there.
  Also just recently qBittorrent included support for I2P in their latest release. Before that, only 2 Bittorrent clients existed. Now we're up to 3.
  The biggest advantage is that you don't need to spend money anymore for a VPN. Or any money for a seedbox either if you have a home computer you can just leave up to seed for you.
  The biggest disadvantage is the hard setup and (so far) lack of torrent availability. More stuff is getting added all the time but we need more scene groups adding their releases to i2p (cross-seeding).
  
  The biggest advantage is that you don't need to spend money anymore for a VPN
  Unless you use it for accessing and switching to and from Canadian/UK Netflix or something like that on a Roku or Firestick, I presume.

Mullvad fiasco? What did I miss?
- Mullvad disabled port forwarding due to bad people abusing it. It would happen to anyone honestly.
  
  Fucking pedos ruined everything.
  
  If thats what the poster is calling a "fiasco", thats a bit much. I was curious what Port forwarding was when that announcement first happened and Mullvad themselves said if you didn't know what Port forwarding was before their announcement, nothing was changing for you in regards to their services. This is only a fiasco (to my understanding) if you're someone who file-shares/torrent. Not saying the poster is spreading bad faith or whatever of course.
  
  Does this have any serious implications for the average VPN user? Like would any torrenting reveal your IP without port forwarding?
- https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports/#:~:text=Today%20we%20announce%20that%20we,removed%202023%2D07%2D01.
  
  Can't say i blame them if it was basically becoming the "clearnet CP site" solution.
  
  Bah! And i have about three quarters of a year paid up with them! Oh well, so long as I can still torrents some I'm sure I'll be okay
- Mullvad shut down port forwarding
- They don't allow / work with port forwarding anymore.

Huh, I've been using a VPN for torrent without setting up any kind of port forwarding! Can someone explain why you might want to do this?
- Port forwarding, which Mullvad was allowing until recently, allows other people to connect to your bittorrent client that is downloading/seeding torrents. This makes it easier for you to find others who can either help you download, or seed for other users in the network.
  Basically it improves download speeds and allows you to easily upload to everyone else.
  
  I see, thanks for clarifying! Even without port-forwarding, I'm able to make some connections. Is there just a more limited set of destination IPs I'm able to connect to? What dictates whether or not I'm able to connect?

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
  
  :C

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.
  
  Gotcha. So its basically a large, decentralized overlay network...ie you can't use it to "privately" access clearnet content as you can with a VPN. Sounds like the headline is misleading.
  
  It's a entirely different protocol then? That's smart actually. I need to look into it.
- Seems like i2p has its own version of exit nodes. So if you're not configured as an exit node you should be in the clear as all communications are end to end encrypted, so it would be difficult to impossible to determine what is passing through you as an intermediate node.

Thanks for the info. Although this can't really replace VPNs for my specific use-cases, this is still very useful info to have just in case. Good to know there are alternatives. Thanks also for including the info hash for the guide.

It was not a fiasco. It showed us that they can be trusted.

I'm hoping DHT and PEX support comes to libtorrent eventually so that qbittorrent can use DHT/PEX with I2P and not just http trackers. I think only i2psnark and a few other clients support it right now. I encourage everyone to cross seed their public torrents to the I2P network and upload to patracker to support the network. Unfortunately, for niche content and private trackers VPNs/seedboxes are a necessity

How well does i2p mesh with private trackers? Would they be able to track up/down ratios?

PSA: qbittorrent has early access (still in development) for native i2p torrenting. I recommend waiting for that to be officially released

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
- It's one of those things that gets faster the longer I2P software is running. As I understand it, it takes time to building link betoween yourself and other members of the network in a safe and secure way, but once they're built up that extends your reach and speed
  
  So basically the torrent over i2p speed depends on how many torrent users use i2p as weel, as I understand, i2p torrent node will not connect ti a non-i2p node.
  Am I understanding this correctly?

Could you add a block about I2P in general?
- 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.
- There's an i2p lemmy community, feel free to join us there. i2p

Interesting stuff, I had heard of i2p before, but mostly in connection with darknet and not yet with torrenting, but it‘s something I might play around with now that I know.
- Yeh I had tried torrenting on Tor a LONG time ago but people made it clear to not do that on Tor for one reason or another. But on i2p, the devs made a torrent client directly into the software. It was one of their features and something they want people to use.

I had never heard of it! Thx for the tip

I just changed to AirVPN.
Some alternatives I considered: using i2p (but was unaware of the tracker you mentioned) and exploring a fancy VPN called Orchid because it seemed fancy, but gave up on the last two.
I'll try again i2p to share my Ubuntu ISO.
- I'll admit I2P is harder to setup than a VPN, but I just kept getting frustrated by having to pay and expose data to various VPN services. I can share tips about running I2P in Linux too.
  
  Please do!

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
- I think the only use-case maybe not covered is finding torrents that aren't uploaded to the I2P tracker yet. They need to be cross-seeded from people who originally uploaded them or from people downloading them from the clearnet to be available.
  An example of this is anime. There is significantly less anime available on i2p currently than there are on sites like nyaa.si. People can cross-seed these torrents to make them available on i2p. I do that, for instance. But other than that I can't think of any other use case that isn't covered.

Has anyone tried to use this with Docker and Raspberry Pi? It doesn't appear to work for me: i2p_1 | standard_init_linux.go:219: exec user process caused: no such file or directory which I think is probably an architecture error. I saw somewhere on Reddit someone was working on an Arm64 docker, but can't find the post now.
- There are arm images check my posts or the docker hub for lemmy
  
  For i2p? I'm not trying to get lemmy to run in docker, just i2p. :-) There do not appear to be any geti2p arm64 images. There is a diva-exchange arm64 tree but it also does not appear to be maintained anymore. 🤷‍♀️
  Thanks for your posts, btw!
- That usually means that the image you used isn't built for arm I think. If you used an arm image idk tho
- As I remember there should be arm64 images for i2pd, like this one https://hub.docker.com/r/purplei2p/i2pd
  
  Hmm, thanks! I'll look into this one later today.
  
  That works pretty well; it's not as polished as the geti2p docker, but it gets the job done! Just need to wait on qBittorrent to firm up their i2p support and I think it'll be golden for my needs. Thanks!!

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

Why not Tor?
- Tor relies on exit nodes that are run by volunteers. These exit nodes are limited in both quantity and bandwidth and valuable for activists and others requiring high levels of privacy for the clearnet. I2P does not access the clearnet by default. Instead I2P is peer to peer focused and is setup ideally for torrenting privately. Basicaly Tor would be overloaded if it was used heavily for torrenting. I2P instead gets more robust with eachadditional user.

I’m out of the loop. What happens with mulvaad

I use private internet access for years with port forwarding after almost getting booted from my ISP, been fine here
- If you're happy with their service then that's great! I used PIA for a long time too.

Can you port forward with i2p?
- Yes. When you setup I2P, if you are on a home router with NAT, you setup port forwarding for I2P to get through. I believe it supports UPnP as well, which would circumvent this need.
  You don't need to configure anything else for being connectable from the wider network. The torrent clients remain connectable allowing you to easily seed.

138 comments