As far as i'm concerned, we need VPNs so that when torrenting, people cant see our IP adress and other information that can be potentially used againt us. I've heard that there's people who log those IP adresses so that they can like "report" people doing piracy or sth like that. Correct me if i'm wrong.

So, with this purpose in mind, I understand that VPN services are useful because they can help hide our real information. But as I said, I dont like subscription services and I saw that there's the option to selfhost a VPN.

But I thought a bit about it, and, if I'm using a selfhosted VPN using, for example, a raspberry pi or a laptop, isn't the imformation of that laptop ALSO potentially dangerous? Because it is connected to your own ISP and it has the same location as you have (if you set it up at yout home).

I know this may sound dumb, but I don't know much about this. And I can't find information about this.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

The point of a VPN while torrenting is to remove the direct link between your home IP and the one that's actually torrenting.

A VPN (the type you see advertised everywhere) is just a tunnel between two devices. Data goes (encrypted) out one device, to the other, gets decrypted, and sent off to its actual destination. This way, to anyone who doesn't keep a close eye on this chain (everyone except you, the VPN company, and a government potentially spying on the VPN company) it looks like the source of the data is the other device in the VPN (usually some host owned by the VPN provider).

This uses a different public IP than your home address, and is only tracable back to the VPN company for any external entities. This includes the companies tracking the use of torrents and submitting claims to your ISP of your torrenting.

If you host a VPN at home, the traffic just goes from your device to your VPN server (laptop or rpi), and then out to its destination, which will all still be from your home IP.

Even hosting one yourself externally, there will likely be some government trackable name or purchasing info associated with where you're hosting it. Even if not, there's only your IP connecting to it, and then regular internet traffic (or torrents) going out. The only way to mask this is to use a truly private, pre-hosted VPN.

Mullvad is decent for privacy, and although other services perform the same task (NordVPN, Proton, etc), they are all less trustworthy in many ways. NordVPN is especially one to avoid.

Since most of these VPN providers operate with a monthly subscription, it will be hard to avoid.