I am not in a place where I can afford a VPN (do not start suggesting cheap VPNs to me istg), and in addition, you have to place a lot of trust in the VPN. Tribler seems promising, except... For the giant disclaimer that's been on the site for years. That worries me. I am quite worried about getting scary letters from my ISP or something when torrenting.
Do not put yourself in danger. Our anonymity is not yet mature.
Tribler does not protect you against spooks and government agencies. We are a torrent client and aim to protect you against lawyer-based attacks and censorship. With help from many volunteers we are continuously evolving and improving.
Edit: Seems like there are a lot of issues below the surface as well... https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/19118584/10120234
And Lokinet, I2P, and GNUnet have their own massive problems... https://comment.ctrl.blog/discussion/tribler-onion-routed-bittorrent
ngl, kinda depressing that it's like this...
Edit 2: I misread the article a bit, it's not quite as dire as I thought it was initially, but the warning and the fact that only the core file-transferring features are anonymized at all... Is a bit disconcerting.
In many cases, you have to disable the privacy setting (hops) to be able to download anything. Probably because it still hasn't attracted a lot of users.
They switched from a client application to a web interface in a recent update, which I'm not a fan of (mainly because I'm blocking right click hijacking in my browser).
It's nice to add an extra layer of security, imo, but I wouldn't rely on it completely if you're in one of those countries where ISPs don't respect your privacy.
uuuuuuugh, good to know