Torrenting and Static IP VPNs

VPN
1

Something of an intellectual curiosity question.

I use Windscribe as my VPN, and they offer static IPs as an add-on service. However, for the purposes of torrenting, wouldn’t that be counterproductive? Part of the draw of using a VPN is your traffic gets mixed in with everyone else’s traffic at the VPN server, and since it’s all encrypted and the provider (hopefully) isn’t keeping any logs that can identify who’s downloading what, it makes it nearly impossible to trace the traffic from a specific torrent back to a specific user. However, if a person has a static IP, wouldn’t that then make it rather trivial to figure out who was responsible for a given bit of traffic on a torrent?

Assuming there’s a flaw somewhere in my reasoning, could someone kindly explain to me where and what it is?

2

Yep, it’s rather pointless for torrenting, but the risk of being identified is actually rather low, because while DMCA bot will get your static IP, they usually can’t ask the VPN provider what account is holding the IP unless a serious crime (ie, murder) is involved. They also can’t send a query to ISPs asking which of their customer is connected to that IP.

There’s a niche situation where you’re using a private tracker that hates shared IP but doesn’t ban VPN entirely, though in that case a seedbox is usually simpler.

3

Yes, for torrenting, having a shared IP is better