Stremio is basically a streaming torrent client. It's incredibly handy. It allows you to look up movies and stream them and at the same time grab subtitles from various sources. It has the same functionality as
r/PopCornTime, but it's better because the community-made addons allow grabbing torrents from tons of different sources, increasing the chances of finding a well-seeded torrent exponentially. If Popcorn Time (itself being a FOSS app) allowed that, I would still be using it. But I got tired of not being able to stream any slightly unpopular movie.
So is Stremio safe? In my opinion,
it is not. Although the dev makes triumphant blog posts about Stremio open-sourcing their code, I have noticed that not all of their services are open source. When asked about it, the
dev's explanation is pretty clear: they have an agreement with a partner company and an investor preventing them from publishing it. This is a major red flag for two reasons:
- It is nowhere clearly stated who the investor and the company are. In general, there is an infuriating lack of transparency. For example, in its privacy policy, it is stated in bold that "if you login as a Guest User, no personal data will be collected whatsoever", which is a conspicuous lie. You can't use Stremio without an account so what the hell is a "Guest User"?
- It's a for-profit company, without mentioning anywhere that they don't track you. Stating in their FAQ section on their home page that they are open-source without clarifying that they have closed-source blobs is especially shady. Considering that their answer to the follow-up question "Is Stremio Safe?" is "the code is publically auditable and you can review it yourself", when in reality they're not entirely open source, sounds like a clever way to imply that they have open sourced only the parts that are clean, while leaving the tracking code in the dark.
This brings us to the following conclusion. They are not being transparent, because they have something to hide.
It's highly likely that they are collecting data and selling it to their partners. That's why it is required to register an account and they're not giving the option to use the software as a guest. It is especially shady, because they have the audacity to make money from voluntary peer-to-peer behavior ie creative commons and community-shared movies.
There are two excellent alternative streaming torrent clients, despite being different in some ways. WebTorrent and the official PopCorn Time app (for a similar Stremio experience). Both entirely FOSS and trusted. Avoid Stremio at all costs.
