I was a happy Netflix user until 2018, before that I haven’t really pirated any movies (with very rare exceptions) for almost a decade but I recently started again. I’m was doing my monthly budgeting and realized I was paying for too many subscription services. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Shudder, Disney+, Hulu and Crunchyroll. My family likes to watch different types of content that is distributed on many different platforms.

I was never subscribed to these many services until a couple years ago. I was thinking which service I should cancel when I realized I had the option to cancel all of them this entire time. I’m torrenting again and I started saving a considerate amount.

The only service I’m paying for is Spotify which I think it’s fairly priced and offers all the music my family listens too (and it’s convenient). All the competitors pretty much offer the same content and that’s how streaming services should be.

I remember back in the day using eMule and BitChe (to look for torrents). Now I’m using Deluge as my torrent client and I I get my torrents from 1337x. What sites are you guys using?

        • mortrek@lemmy.mlEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Make sure there are no “leaks” once you get PIA set up. There are online torrent leak checkers.

          • Anomalous_Llama@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            I’ve been using PIA to get around various region locked streaming sites for awhile now

            What do you mean “leaks” like apps on my Pc not using it?

            • rooster_butt@programming.devEnglish
              4·
              1 year ago

              You can bind your torrent client to only use the VPN connection. The default is that if there is a drop on the vpn, most torrent clients use any connection which means it would just use your normal connection and could leak your ip address.

            • Shonzi@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
              4·
              1 year ago

              DNS leaks. I got caught on my VPN like 3 times and didn’t understand why until I realized that my VPN has massive DNS leaks.

      • Anomalous_Llama@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15·
        1 year ago

        Very angry letter home threatening legal action that definitely pissed off my parents (I was in high school at the time)

        Did not help that it was an adult movie that got me caught and this was apparent because the bastards included the movie title in the letter lmao

      • faladorable@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        when i got caught like 15 years ago all they did was send a letter in the mail asking that delete the downloaded game as if they would have any way of knowing if i actually did or not lol. I had a vpn but didn’t know about binding it to the downloader

    • Toribor@corndog.ukEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      PIA was bought out by Kape Technologies which has a sketchy history of running malicious man-in-the-middle ad-injection software for profit. Up to you if you think that’s a dealbreaker or not, but I’d recommend using Mullvad instead.

      • Anomalous_Llama@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        They passed a third party audit of their No logs policy in June of 2022 so although Kape is a concern I’ve been keeping a close eye on it. Performance has still been great across my devices (iPad, iOS, windows, MacBook) and so until I see a change from my side or some more concerning news about it comes out I’ve been happy with it.

    • Sterben@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      1 year ago

      To be honest, I have been always using NordVPN, never had any issues with them. Torrenting like a beast 😂

      Probably there are other, cheaper and better, VPNs.

        • HoustonHenry@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          1 year ago

          Seconding Nord, love it. If I happen to get slow speeds I just connect to a different location (only happens if im running double vpn, or obfuscated, sometimes they get slow- TOR vpn is super slow so i dont use that one. These are different categories of VPN inside of Nord if you are wondering).

          IIRC, Nord is one of the few who keeps their data on RAM, meaning if an agency requests records, they unplug it to give to them, and the data is gone as soon as it’s unplugged. If im wrong, let me know!