So far, public trackers have been working fine for me, but think I’ve finally run into some niche shows that have been hard to find or only been able to find individual episodes instead of a single collected season torrent. (Nothing too special, just some baking shows.)
I’m wondering if it’s finally time to look into private trackers or Usenet.
If you use them, what did it take for you to finally look into these more time or effort intensive piracy options?
A movie you wanted to see that was too old to be seeded on public trackers? TV shows too old or niche? A game, an obscure music artist? Something else? Was it just curiosity? Or something you did immediately upon getting into piracy? I’m just curious myself lol.
Would it be weird to get a seed box when I already have a separate plex server I’ve been using to torrent and an NAS, just so I can seed 24/7 without risking leaking packets or something?
It depends on what trackers you’re on and how much storage you have, and how risk averse you are.
First of all, binding your torrent client to the VPN interface should prevent all leakage.
Additional precautions like running your torrent client behind a container like gluetun should make it pretty much impossible to leak your IP to adversaries. Or if you have a plain Linux server, running the torrent client in it’s own network namespace also achieves the same result.
The other big reason to get a seedbox is to be able to maintain your ratio. This depends on your tracker.
E.g. I have enough storage for a large enough seeding size and enought torrents to get sufficient bonus points. Combined with a bit of upload here and there, I get enough upload/buffer to snatch what I want.
On many trackers, large enough torrents are often freeleech, so they don’t count towards the download stat anyway.
tl;dr
If you bound your torrent client to the VPN, I’d seed with your NAS unless you don’t get enough upload to maintain your ratio on your specific private trackers. Storage is way cheaper on your NAS.