I fought the law and the LAW WON

[Jinx]

So, after six years of torrenting, I finally got a C&D from my currnet provider. It seems like as long as I stop torrenting under their company, they're willing to just leave it at a warning and call it good.

I was wondering if there's something I can do to make sure our internet/my computer is safe, though. Computer nerds, assemble!

[Shorty]

Relocated to Help Forum.

[Parker]

get a new provider

[Parker]

Alternatively look into getting a seedbox. They're fairly cheap a month. You can then download your perfectly legal copyright-free files from there using FTP or HTTP....so it doesn't show up as torrent traffic.

[Madame Adequate]

Well there is one failsafe solution... you may not like it though.

You could stop breaking the law :p

Seriously though you can't be perfectly safe online, you can just be reasonably so. How reasonably so depends on what you want to spend, which ranges from "no money and a little safe" to "some money and somewhat safe" and that's about it unless you have contacts in either the computing industry or intelligence community.

[Pike]

Probably a virus scan and malware scan.

[Parker]

There's next to no reason to suggest you've been compromised?

[CimminyCricket]

You can run Malware-Bytes AntiMalware and AntiRootKit. I run them pretty regularly on my grandparents' computers just to make sure they aren't being ignorant. Both have free versions and premium versions, but I only have the premium trial installed when I need it. I think it is 14 days free trial, so I uninstall and reinstall every 14 days or so and run the scans.

if you're looking for a pretty sweet antivirus, I would look at webroot. it's cloud based and the full scans don't usually take longer than 4 minutes. Totally worth the 50$ for a years.

[Freya]

Here's the thing, they don't know really what you're torrenting unless they have some kind of yeah monitoring thing which is kinda illegal (LOOKING AT YOU NSA) They most likely just notice the data spikes at certain times coming from certain locations. If you're worried then yeah just stop. If you've been torrenting a lot, they probably notice the data usage. It kinda throws out red flags if you don't use much for your normal browsing then BAM over night it's huge, you should be sleeping, your normal patterns aren't like that.

It's interesting to say the least how they figure it out. Otherwise the only way is if there was some tagged tracker in a download you got and it was tracked some how. But I doubt it cause i've heard of them sending these things typically with data usage.

Just be careful and sparsely torrent if you continue to do so. They're watching your usage. Which is creepy but they have that right at least as a provider.

[Freya]

That's strange since hbo has been quoted by their CEO that they are okay with pirating and sharing hbogo passwords....

[Slothy]

Here's the thing, they don't know really what you're torrenting unless they have some kind of yeah monitoring thing which is kinda illegal (LOOKING AT YOU NSA) They most likely just notice the data spikes at certain times coming from certain locations. If you're worried then yeah just stop. If you've been torrenting a lot, they probably notice the data usage. It kinda throws out red flags if you don't use much for your normal browsing then BAM over night it's huge, you should be sleeping, your normal patterns aren't like that.

It's interesting to say the least how they figure it out. Otherwise the only way is if there was some tagged tracker in a download you got and it was tracked some how. But I doubt it cause i've heard of them sending these things typically with data usage.

Just be careful and sparsely torrent if you continue to do so. They're watching your usage. Which is creepy but they have that right at least as a provider.

Nice thing about having a bunch of Steam games and such, and just basically being me, is that my internet usage is pretty massive all the time. Hard to throw up red flags when there's nothing out of the ordinary.

[Psychotic]

Here's the thing, they don't know really what you're torrenting unless they have some kind of yeah monitoring thing which is kinda illegal (LOOKING AT YOU NSA) They most likely just notice the data spikes at certain times coming from certain locations. If you're worried then yeah just stop. If you've been torrenting a lot, they probably notice the data usage. It kinda throws out red flags if you don't use much for your normal browsing then BAM over night it's huge, you should be sleeping, your normal patterns aren't like that.

It's interesting to say the least how they figure it out. Otherwise the only way is if there was some tagged tracker in a download you got and it was tracked some how. But I doubt it cause i've heard of them sending these things typically with data usage.

Just be careful and sparsely torrent if you continue to do so. They're watching your usage. Which is creepy but they have that right at least as a provider.

Nice thing about having a bunch of Steam games and such, and just basically being me, is that my internet usage is pretty massive all the time. Hard to throw up red flags when there's nothing out of the ordinary.Hard to throw up red flags? We'll see about that. I'm going to narc on you to your ISP.

[Slothy]

Keep in mind that I'm not above hunting you for sport if you do.

[Psychotic]

And here I thought the last three years had meant something to you too. :-/ It's at times like this when you learn who your real nemeses are.

[Jiro]

Well I guess I am fortunate like Vivi22 then; plenty of Steam downloads running all the time.

[Gzussaves]

yea unforunately it doesnt work like that..
The real problem, if you're downloading illegal media, is the company from whom you're stealing. They (or lawyers or companies on their behalf) actually go online and seek out torrents of their material, whether it be movies, music, TV shows, or anything else, and will download the torrent themselves. From there, they can see a lot of information about the other users connected—including their IP address. You can even check this for yourself at home. Start downloading a torrent and click on the "More Info" section of your torrent client. You'll see the IP address of everyone you're downloading from and uploading to, plain as day.

Once they find your IP address (which they can do just by clicking "more info" in their torrent client), they'll find out who your ISPP is and then send them a letter. Your ISP then, in turn, will forward you a notice that you've been caught pirating media. Usually the first offense is just a proverbial slap on the wrist, though if you're a repeat offender it could mean having your internet service terminated. If you're very unlucky it could even mean paying a lot of money in a settlement.


However if you want to continue downloading stuff you could get a vpn tunnel for varying prices depending on use.. privateinternetaccess seems to be a more reliable one...

but you didnt hear any of this from me XD

[Vyk]

HBO and certain big studio companies like Paramount and Universal and stuff are really the only ones who worry about this stuff. But it's all completely automated from my understanding. There's just a bot watching the latest releases or most protected properties. And HBO is notorious about watching all their old stuff. There's way too much traffic for Game of Thrones for them to even try to worry about. But they still leave it up for their older stuff

All that happened was you downloaded a tagged torrent and everyone's IP got a C&D automatically sent to their ISP with their info, ISP knows it was you and passes the message along. I highly doubt your ISP cares how much data you're using, I highly doubt your computer has been compromised. They just saw your IP doing something on their end, not yours. You have nothing to worry about

I know you're gunshy at the moment, but honestly you could go right back to pirating things if you wanted. Just stay away from HBO and new released movies and games and you'd be alright. But maybe take it as a life lesson and rethink things a bit. I got one once when I went for a movie I'd never heard of but sounded interesting and had no idea it had JUST released that weekend. I downloaded it WAY too soon, and got a C&D the next week

Anymore I only download older things if I need to

[escobert]

You could look into getting a VPN. That's what we've been doing since getting a CAD order. And I also started giving my roommates massive amounts of trout for how much bandwidth they hog up. I was using 120GB a month by myself and had never received a letter since I don't download very much in the way of torrents and as soon as they moved in it went to over 700GB a month and a letter quickly followed.

[Vyk]

This was over three months ago! I'm definitely pirating again. :)
Oh, damn thread resurrections lol Glad everything worked out

[o_O]

Were you torrenting a really large amount of stuff? In New Zealand, the ISPs don't really care about copyright infringement. They care about large numbers of customers with massive bandwidth users, choking out the exchanges and making network traffic congested and slow for everyone else. Torrenting places a heavy strain on the network infrastructure, so this can be a real issue around peak times.

Unless the company's getting pressured by the film/music industry or government or something, I'd guess it's not even about the copyright infringement, but rather the volume of data you're using.