I was thinking of the cost of hosting the site rather than paying for the media. Thanks thoigh for the comment about checking the stream source.

Looking through the discord group it looks pretty straight up. Part of the project is an android music player.

Its on fmhy site here https://fmhy.net/audio Has invite link to Discord and Telegram

Im not aware its possible to put malware in a flac file and its still playable. There are a few examples from 2007-2008 but they were to do with flac media players. Microsoft showed you could corrupt the meta data but its then unplayable. I think BlueRingedOctopus comment has the right idea.

If I was I’d be earning a lot more than I do at the moment.

Fair enough. Thought that after I posted.

I don’t understand your thinking about this. Torrent seeding is done on a person by person basis. We have no way of knowing what the person thinks about what their government does or anything else. It seems, to me, strange thinking to group everyone in a country and make a moral judgement about them when, well, your pirating software and content. But that’s just my opinion, do it if it feels right to you.

Many thanks for checking this. When I used the following setting in the extension I didn’t see any further calls.

“check update opt-in Check for update of version (on startup and when opening options): check update enabled: NO”

Ok, it does look like it’s checking for list updates, just more often.l than I expected. I went into the settings and disabled as below and the calls stop. So all good!

“check update opt-in Check for update of version (on startup and when opening options): check update enabled: NO”

I was doing some investigating of various browser telemetry using android pcap log. I noticed that on any browser I install bypass paywall plus there is a call to gitflic.ru when viewing a page even when it’s not on the list of processed websites in the extension. I can’t tell the contents as it’s https. Considering this extension and developer have been around for a long time I’ve no reason to suspect the extension but I’m wondering why the connection? I doubt it’s checking for updates as it does it often when viewing any page. Any thoughts from anyone? I’m not trying to run down the app at all, I think it’s really good, just wondering why the connection.

Just looked at review for Russian free Urban VPN. More holes than Swiss cheese. Still it was amusing to read at how bad it is.

I currently use PIA as required.

Yes, I get that feeling too!

Yes that’s a good point. I’m thinking ahead in case my current VPN starts logging and looking at alternatives but your right, it’s nearly traceable as not using an VPN at all.

I think your right that yes it does seem like a coordinated crack down at the moment. Almost like round 2.

My experience with Russian sourced software is to treat it as low trust, like I do everywhere else, until proved otherwise. An example is gitflic.ru. I’m cautious about it but can see a number of developers moved there after being thrown of MS’s Github so a very legitimate reason to use it. Is potential Russian surveillance any worse than the government of the country in which you live? Probably not.

As others are saying, rip anything you can’t download from anywhere else otherwise just download. I’ve been through this too and ripping old VHS or DVD takes a lot more time and hassle than downloading it.

Genuine question, are Russian sites any worse or better than anywhere else these days?

In the professional world it’s called “Distributed backups” and is recommended technique for archiving. I’m doing my bit daily at no charge to the media industry, just out of the goodness of my heart :)

Whack a mole.

Looks quite possible. It does connect every time you visit a site on the bypass list but not viewing other sites.