This is a harm reduction guide for my friends who risk malware and surveillance, mostly while stealing things on the internet, but also just by browsing unhygenically.

Navigation

• Browser
• Searching tips
• Tor
• VPNs
• Piracy
  • tl;dr
  • overview
  • legality
  • viruses
  • clients
  • trackers
  • Where do I pirate _____?
    • windows
    • music
    • video
    • apps
    • software
    • games
    • books

Last updated: Jan 4 2025 (please email me [or text/telegram if you have it] with suggestions/etc.)

Browser

Chrome phased out privacy features and adblockers. Browser monopolies are bad¹. Please switch to firefox; it’s the most popular open source chromium alternative. Mozilla maintains a page on switching from chrome to firefox. Keep your old browser for when an addon² or chromium-centered-webdev breaks a page.

Firefox addons I recommend³ for most people:

• Ublock Origin
• I still don’t care about cookies (manages cookie pop-ups)
• Wayback Machine (right-click internet archive retrieval to bypass paywalls and fight link rot)
• SponsorBlock (skips youtube sponsored segments)
• Alternative Player for Twitch.tv (hides, not blocks, ads)
• Link Cleaner+ (removes tracking data from URLs)

If you aren’t going to use a password manager, firefox accounts have a password sync feature between devices. Use the Secure Password Generator addon for whenever firefox’s generator doesn’t recognize a password field. Access your logins in the address bar at about:logins.

For better-than-chrome multitasking, increasing browser.low_commit_space_threshold_mb makes firefox unload unused tabs.

Searching tips

There’s a lot of misinformation and advertising in search results because of Search Engine Optimization, AI-generated content, and a lack of financial incentive to fix the problem. Search engines have a general syntax⁴:

• "vegan" restaurants will only return results containing the keyword vegan
• restaurants -pinterest -vegan will only return results that don’t contain vegan or pinterest
• restaurants site:michelin.com will only return results from michelin.com;
• "vegan" restaurants -expensive site:michelin.com will give you michelin.com articles containing the word vegan about restaurants that don’t have expensive anywhere in their body or title.

Sitesearching reddit (appending site:reddit.com) is a common tactic to find unsponsored product reviews, but advertisers always adapt.

For approximate knowledge that isn’t monetized yet, instruction-tasked LLMs like chatGPT are a great way to search for things, because they’re trained on the (2023) internet.

Archive.org saves old webpages. To find the link below, I searched darknetmarkets 2022 site:reddit.com, looked for the first banned subreddit I could find, put its URL into the internet archive, retrieved an old version of the site, and found links in its sidebar.

TOR/VPNs and the darkweb

The Onion Router bounces your connection around dozens of different anonymous nodes before reaching an endpoint. This is a generally secure way to access the internet, but is slow. Make sure you properly configure TOR. Tails is a portable linux distribution that pre-configures TOR, if you’re both knowledgeable and paranoid. Torrenting over TOR is very disrespectful.

VPNs are a node between user and destination. You (user) connect to a website (destination) through a middleman (node), so the site can’t see your IP address. Any VPN service with an ad budget is selling your valuable data to remain competitive. PrivateInternetAccess & NordVPN also explicitly cooperate with states. /r/VPNReviews can help you pick a VPN; make sure it allows P2P downloading if you’re torrenting.

Darknet markets come and go all the time. Here is a snapshot of darknet markets from 2023⁵. You can only use these links in a TOR browser. Monero is the current anonymous cryptocurrency of choice; Bitcoin is more traceable.

Piracy

Here are overviews of content-specific internet piracy ecosystems. Full resources at freemediaheckyeah or the piracy subreddit

TL;DR?

• Download qBittorrent and enable search engine from the view menu
  • Mobile users: choose a client and read the sections on trackers so you know how to search
• Go to the qBittorrent plugins page
• Install plugins corresponding to the most reputable trackers for your desired content
• Download games and software from these links; don’t search them out
• Ignore ISP emails. Pay for a VPN if you get too many.

Explanation of torrenting

• Other people have copies of files you want
• You get bits⁶ of the files from whoever has them and is online
• Many small downloads sum to a torrent of data
• A torrent client connects you to the swarm: others who are currently uploading/downloading those files
• Swarm joining instructions are inside a magnet link or a torrent file. Open these with your torrent client
• These links and files are hosted on websites called torrent trackers
• Torrent trackers try to prevent users from uploading viruses
• After finishing a download, your swarm position moves from leech to seed

Seed your torrents, especially if they’re obscure.

Torrenting’s legality

• In every jurisdiction I’m aware of, torrenting is only illegal when copyrighted data is exchanged, therefore:
  • the torrent software is itself perfectly legal,
  • the torrent tracker is legal⁷ because it doesn’t host any copyrighted data; only references to it.
• Exchanging files reveals your IP address unless you use a VPN or proxy;
• Copyright holders can join the swarm and notify your Internet Service Provider
• Your ISP or a copyright holder can nag you, but non-monopolies have a financial incentive to continue service and minimally legally comply
  • Get a VPN after a few nags
  • Never reply to these nags; you strengthen a case by identifying yourself
  • Letters/fines vary by jurisdiction. US, Germany, & UK are the worst⁸

Viruses and torrenting

The typical targets on your computer are your credentials, its ability to mine cryptocurrency or participate in a botnet, and your willingness to pay ransom for your files. Most viruses try to remain undetected; if you take risks torrenting, either wipe your drive periodically or maintain a dedicated machine for torrenting.

Some tips:

• Torrented media rarely contain viruses; torrented programs often contain viruses
• New torrents are more likely to contain viruses than old torrents by virtue of content moderation
  • Trackers also usually have comments sections for each torrent
• The most popular torrent for a new media release usually has a copyright agent in the swarm who will log your IP
• Free antiviruses aren’t really better than OS defaults e.g. Windows Defender
• If you want to take a chance on a file, scan it with virustotal
• Wikipedia software articles usually have a link to their homepage to prevent you from getting phished:
  • facebook.co, facebook.net, etc. are not the same websites as facebook.com, and can appear identical, down to the styling of the page or the URL you click: facebook.com
  • facebook.com.market is a subdomain of com.market. Don’t fall for this one; it’s embarassing; I’ll judge you

What torrent client should I use?

• Win/mac/linux: Transmission or qBittorrent (my rec)
• Android: LibreTorrent
• iOS: iTorrent

What torrent tracker should I use?

For general-purpose:

• 1337x first,
• thepiratebay second (but watch out⁹),
• whatever is linked above third.

Each section below has individual recommendations.

Torrent sites get attacked/seized or migrate often. Consult a proxy list¹⁰ if a site is down. For example, thepiratebay.org goes down all the time, so 10 years ago I would use thepiratebay.xyz before it died, now I mostly use thepiratebay10.org.

Where do I pirate _____?

Windows

This is a lot less risky than it used to be because most cracks now use microsoft’s windows images. To crack an active windows installation, follow these instructions¹¹ (you want to use HWID). Remember to:

• open powershell/terminal as an administrator
• install without an internet connection (and therefore don’t create a microsoft account)

To install windows:

• Get latest windows image from microsoft (10 11)
• Take a thumb drive and either rufus (windows), Disk Utility (mac), or something like dd if=/path/to/iso of=/path/to/usb conv=fsync bs=8M¹² (linux) to make an installation USB
• Reboot with the USB plugged in. You will usually have to enter your BIOS (or boot menu), typically by holding down the f2 (or f8, f12, insert, delete…) key, booting from the USB or changing your boot order to prioritize it.
• Install Windows. Select Pro or Pro N (Pro N is the EU-compliant version with less bloat, but you’ll want to install the Windows Media Feature Pack yourself)
• I recommend tronscript or winutil for debloating¹³ and chocolatey for package managing¹⁴
• An example tron command for a tron.bat file downloaded to C:\Users\a\Downloads\Tron on a fresh machine is C:\Users\a\Downloads\Tron\tron.bat -a -sa -sd -scc -v (skipping antivirus scans, defrag, and cookies). Run this in cmd as an administrator.
• Crack windows using the admin powershell github commands in the link above

Music

It’s hard to get a virus from downloading music. rutracker is my favorite public tracker for music¹⁵. Soulseek has a good english-language selection but it’s kindof closed off from the rest of the torrent ecosystem.

For phones: you’re probably looking for a cracked spotify app in Apps below. revanced/newpipe will handle youtube. These projects come and go.

For desktops, yt-dlp downloads youtube media, and just using the web version of spotify with ublock origin on firefox should block its ads, but if you want, here’s a cracked windows spotify github, another, and one for macos/linux.

If you’re new to downloading your own music, put everything in a music folder, and make playlists inside your music player. I use foobar2000 because it’s very customizable.

Video

The majority of torrenting. Low risk¹⁶; media doesn’t need to e.g. install anything. Go to your public tracker of choice¹⁷. Private trackers have the best selections; those typically involve being invited and passing a screening process.

Use VLC or MPC-HC to watch videos.

When starting a new torrent, downloading in “sequential order” or similar lets you functionally stream video¹⁸. You only need to download about 5-10% of a video before you can play it if your connection is fast enough.

For subtitles, VLC has a submenu (under View -> VLSub) to automate this: use OpenSubtitles, sort by number of downloads, move the file into the same directory as your video, then Subtitle -> Add Track. You might have to go into Tools -> Track Synchronization to sync subtitle delay/speed.

I asked chatGPT: “provide a glossary of terms (such as “x265”, or “5.1”, or “BRRip”) used to describe video hosted on torrent trackers” and received this truncated response:

Sure, here's a glossary of terms commonly used to describe video hosted on torrent trackers:

x265: An advanced video compression format that provides better video quality than the older x264 format, while using less storage space and bandwidth.

5.1: Refers to a type of audio configuration that includes five channels of audio (left, center, right, left surround, and right surround) plus a separate subwoofer channel for bass frequencies. This configuration is commonly used in home theater systems.

BRRip: A video format that stands for "Blu-ray rip." It refers to a high-quality video that has been ripped directly from a Blu-ray disc.

CAM: Short for "camera." A CAM copy is a low-quality recording of a movie that was captured in a movie theater using a handheld camera. The audio and video quality are typically poor.

DVDRip: A video format that stands for "DVD rip." It refers to a high-quality video that has been ripped directly from a DVD.

HDRip: A video format that stands for "High Dynamic Range rip." It refers to a video that has been encoded with HDR, which provides a wider range of colors and better contrast than standard video.

WEB-DL: A video format that stands for "web download." It refers to a video that has been downloaded from an online streaming service, such as Netflix or Amazon Prime Video.

HDTV: Stands for "high-definition television." It refers to a television format that provides a higher resolution and better image quality than standard definition television.

Remux: A video format that refers to a high-quality video that has been copied from a Blu-ray or DVD disc without any compression or loss of quality.

SD: Stands for "standard definition."

Apps

Android users: get illicit APKs from mobilism¹⁹. This ecosystem’s pretty seedy. f-droid is a package manager like the google play store, except it only has free open source apps. F-droid’s app is…bad, so try some frontends like Neo Store or Droid-ify²⁰.

Apple users: jailbreaking is outside the scope of this guide. sideloaded is a community for loading custom apps that don’t require jailbreaking.

Software

This is the riskiest thing you can torrent. m0nkrus’ repacks are reputable. Otherwise, find torrents on a public tracker and roll the dice. Use a virtual machine²¹ for one-shot tasks; that’s also beyond the scope of this guide.

Games

Don’t torrent these off of trackers; there’s a bounty ecosystem where people donate to reputable game crackers²². Two of the most reputable repackers are fitgirl¹⁹ and dodi¹⁹. If they don’t have what you’re looking for, go search the CrackWatch subreddit to find a reputable cracker who does.

Books/academic papers

My first stop is Anna’s Archive, an open-source search engine for many book trackers. The piracy megathread maintains a list of book trackers. Libgen is generally the best book tracker¹⁹.

Myanonamouse is a good private tracker for books that will let you in after a technical interview.

A pdf/mobi/epub/etc filetype search²³ is a good last resort.

For papers specifically, Anna’s indexed sci-hub before the lawsuits stalled it. Academictorrents is solid, then…just email paper authors and they’ll usually send you a copy. You might be able to find a non-paywalled copy on google scholar. Extensions like Bypass Paywalls Clean or Unpaywall have historically been bad at papers.

Have some junk text to make footnotes better²⁴