Privacy — open vs. private trackers

[studioisms]

There's many desirable privacy enhancements surrounding torrent use... such as Anonymous log free VPN and/or Proxy.

But specifically I have questions and curiosity if signing up for a private tracker extends my privacy beyond using the open trackers?

Is it more difficult for a party to gain interest in my ip if it's more difficult to get on a tracker by virtue of invite only?

Do private trackers keep ip logs? Do any advertise they don't keep logs on my activity.

Am I barking up the wrong tree & a tracker is by definition a log of my activity? Maybe the benefits of using a closed tracker don't include privacy at all. Maybe it's a wild west across all trackers?

[smitttty]

I'd love to hear some admins of private trackers comment on this. I've been told by a couple major ones that they only keep 'essential' logs, everythign else is 'wiped'. With that said, they also value storing IPs so they can block unruly users. I'm not sure how much I trust these admins.

I think private trackers are safer more because you are not involved in the massive torrent scene when it comes to music movies games etc. When you torrent from the pirate bay, you are by definition leaking your IP address in the most public way possible. MPAA et. al. track those major torrents.

[Sico]

I'm new to the private scene here but see upon logging in to a new site it says "use of anonymizing service will result in immediate ban" Can anyone tell me how they'll know? I use a vpn service always through the same location and have not told them my location. Any help would be appreciated, I don't want to get banned or piss anyone off but like to keep using vpn. Thanks.

[Ethan]

Private trackers log IP as well, that is the reason they immediately ban multiple accounts if registered using the same IP. However on most trackers u can register using multiple IP's and use multiple accounts using the same IP and u wont be caught for a long time because they are really dumb to check this.

The only difference between private tracker and a public one is that, other parties are not much interested in taking a private tracker down.. they would rather take a public tracker service multiple users than a private tracker which serves only a few thousand users.

The day they take down a private tracker, they will be able to access the IP's..

@Sico : You can use a VPN on most private trackers and u wont get caught, they just say things to scare the users and nothing else.

Only high end trackers have settings to detect VPN's, majority of them dont.