[nolemurs]

> I hope my feeling of relative safety is justified, but I'm not a security expert(?).

If you want to be properly paranoid, you should consider getting a VPN. If you're not hiding your IP address, hiding all the rest is of limited utility. A VM doesn't really provide much meaningful anonymity - if someone wants to prosecute you for piracy they'll start by finding the IP address that was downloading/sharing the stuff (that's publicly visible).

On the other hand, it's pretty likely that this sort of paranoia is totally unnecessary - piracy prosecution against individual downloaders has been historically a PR nightmare for the groups doing it, and more or less everyone seems to have given up on that particular approach.

Still, if you want to be paranoid, a VPN will do a lot more for you than a VM and some add blocking.

[kokx]

If you are properly paranoid, a VPN won't offer much anonymity. VPNs may still keep logs (even if they say they don't, or when they receive NSLs they may be forced to do so).

For real anonymity, Tor is a much better option. Especially if used from a distribution like Tails.

[ItsMe000001]

I don't want to hide my IP address. I'm not paranoid about being found - nothing I do is illegal (I don't download, I watch streams, and that isn't illegal here, only if I downloaded the videos). For me it's only about system security, not legality. The latter would not be helped at all by using a VM.

[ascar]

As you said in another comment you are German and this is a very common false myth in Germany:

Streaming pirated content is exactly as illegal as downloading in Germany and also the whole EU.

Here is a source: https://www.focus.de/digital/praxistipps/anwalt-zu-eugh-urte...

[ItsMe000001]

As I said, I don't care about the legal question and my post was about system security only. Otherwise it would have been completely futile to mention the VM since that does nothing at all for the legal issues.

The illegality-of-streams question is not really relevant unless you are a premium account customer of a portal the authorities might get access to, or any streaming website they might get access to. They have no (legal) way to find streamers if they have no access to the server and/or whoever is hosting it or owns it. They get (non-VPNed) torrent downloaders because it's legally possible to find out which IP addresses download and/or offer a given file.

https://www.chip.de/news/Illegales-Streaming-auf-kinox-to-so...

In the past I did download torrent file videos - only to watch them exactly once or never. I got caught and paid the "Abmahnung" - so what. I stopped because I don't really need it. My need for such video content is very low. Usually I watch 10-30 minutes of movies, even "block busters", and then I'm too bored to ever watch the rest. For example, I still did not watch Game of Thrones past the end of the very first season.

[pbhjpbhj]

So all streamed content is illegal in EU? YouTube, Netflix, ...?

How is a user supposed to know, for all anyone visiting a website knows it's licensed.

Anything on Netflix might be unlicensed, I have no way to tell, same with any random site. If I can find it, that means a large media corp can, so surely one must assume if they didn't get it taken down (sites are blocked and taken down all the time, blocked at ISP level) then it must be OK with the large rights holders.

And of course we know that even stuff from MPAA can be copyright infringing. There's no way for users to establish if something is properly licensed because license are secret.