Many people aren’t familiar what risk P2P add-ons are to the Kodi community. You should be aware of what add-ons that use peer-to-peer connections have in terms of risk and information.
A new report by cordcuttersnews.com talks about the internet service provider (ISP) Comcast issuing warning letters to Kodi users who stream content. ISPs are able to get your information via P2P add-ons (peer-to-peer), which shares your connection to other users while you watch using Kodi.
The article explains as follows:
Many of Kodi’s unofficial add-ons use peer-to-peer streaming that does not hide your IP as you are both downloading the file you are streaming and sharing it with other users who want to watch the same show as you watch the show. Often users of these 3rd party unofficial add-ons are unaware they re-sharing the file in a similar way to how Bittorrent works.
In the case of the report above the Comcast subscriber was using a 3rd party unofficial Kodi add-on on a Fire TV Stick.
For those who are not that familiat with p2p add-ons in the Kodi world, lets answer some common questions:
Should I not use p2p add-ons in Kodi?
The decision whether or not to stream from p2p add-ons in Kodi is completely up to the user. Traditional links streamed off of a file host (like what the Genesis add-on provides) get flooded with traffic when lots of users are online, which can lead to buffering. On the other hand, p2p add-ons thrive when more people use them, since you have more traffic to load the stream off of. However, there is no way to know who you are sharing a connection with and whether it is someone who owns the original content.
Many ISPs send warning letters out to customers, which is enough to scare users away without spending tons of legal money. If you’ve never gotten a letter from your ISP because you live in a country with relaxed laws or your ISP is not actively taking action, you are probably okay to continue as long if you choose to do so.
How do I know what a p2p add-on is?
One of the most popular back-end codecs used for streaming live p2p content is a Kodi add-on called Plexus (or acestream or sopcast). Simply, if you want to stay away from p2p add-ons, don’t install Plexus. Certain add-ons like SportsDevil have some p2p links that require Plexus and they will not open. Likewise, Moneysports has a Plexus playlist that will not work without the add-on.
Other p2p add-ons are used to watch TV shows and movies and work similar to a torrent. They let you stream a movie or show and share what you’d loaded with other users while you want.
We’ve compiled the following list of p2p add-ons. If you have any to add, get in touch with us and we will keep this list updated!
List of Kodi p2p add-ons
- SportsDevil (some sections)
- Moneysports (Plexus playlist)
- Popcorn Time
- P2P Streams
I want to use p2p add-ons, but don’t want my ISP knowing. What can I do?
If you want to freely enjoy p2p add-ons in Kodi, you can hide yourself before a good VPN like IPVanish. When you connect to a VPN, you change what IP address other users connecting to you in the p2p add-ons see. In addition, a VPN has advantages if your ISP has caps on how much you can use the internet or if you live in an area where content is geo-blocked. IPVanish has some advantages of its competitors too:
- Tier 1 hardware (no speed slowdown)
- Log-free, so you can’t be tracked
- 7 day money back guarantee
- The ability to be configured right at your router, for a hassle-free experience.
If you are behind a VPN, you won’t need to worry about p2p add-ons! If you are interested, check out IPVanish here.
