There’s way too much hype over VPN Providers, but do not forget, you are routing all your traffic through their servers
As a general advice, if a VPN provider keeps logs of your activity, does not allow you to pay with crypto, and generally spends way too much on youtube ads is probably not an ideal choice.
Do not follow any advice/recommendation blindly, do your own research on which one offers the best service for your own needs.
You’ll be fine in public trackers without port forwarding due to the abundance of participants. In private trackers, it matters much more.
What is the difference exactly? Can’t tell if I’m missing something fundamental or what. In my head there’s no reason you’d run into issues
There’s no technical difference, but there are differences in practice.
First of all, in order to transfer any content, one of the participants need an open port. In case of public trackers, there are usually a lot of users, so someone will probably have a port open that you can connect to. Also, many don’t even realize that they have open ports, since routers can open them on demand by uPnP. For private trackers, since the userpool is much smaller, it matters more.
Also, for public trackers, you don’t really HAVE TO seed and maintain a good ratio. It’s the right thing to do, but is by no means a necessity. For private trackers, on the other hand, your account will be suspended in most cases if your ratio goes too low.
I ask because I am on several private trackers and haven’t had issues downloading or seeding using mullvad. By what you explained, it shouldn’t be working…
I might be wrong, but I think port forwarding is working for already set up ones till 1st July. Or maybe you have a leaking port through uPnP? Again, just possibilities, not sure. Or maybe you’ve just been lucky and encountered people with open ports.