With torrents you'll want a VPN. Usenet is generally safe just thanks to TLS unless you're uploading content. For that I'd use a VPN. But unlike torrent, Usenet isn't P2P so I can just download at my full internet bandwidth and don't need to hope there are enough seeders out there maintaining it or that I maintain some magic upload / download ratio.

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wltr 5 days ago | parent [-]

What about torrents and Tor? Moral aspects aside. (Personally, I’d not do it, out of respect for the network.) Just curious about it theoretically, how this technology and its ‘moderation’ (let’s call it that) works.

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tstrimple 5 days ago | parent [-]

Torrents and Tor aren't related. BitTorrent (the protocol) is about peer to peer file sharing and the metadata that enables it. Tor is a network overlay that helps prevent an actor from seeing both where a connection is coming from and where it is going to at the same time. If you're using Tor your ISP can see that you're using it, but not what sites you visit. Other agencies could see that Tor traffic is going to website XXX, but not which individual Tor users are making the connection. Just that they come from a Tor relay. It's not perfect and there are ways to compromise the safety Tor and onion routing is trying to provide.

Generally I don't associate Tor with pirating content. It's more about accessing published content or publishing content anonymously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_routing

	▲	wltr 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, I know, and that’s why I mentioned that personally I won’t use tor network for downloading huge amounts of data, out of the respect for the network. It’s meaningful for countries where Internet is censored, and wasn’t invented for piracy, rather for censoring circumvention. But theoretically it’s possible to move your traffic through the network, that way nobody can tell you are torrenting, I assume. (Or at least what you’re torrenting.) Personally, I know just one person who does that. We’re not close for me to ask him anything, though (a friend of a friend of a friend). For the context, he lives in Germany.