How to Bypass the Daily Mega Download Restrictions
The Mega file storage service usually turns off free users after they’ve downloaded about 5GB or so, forcing you to wait for hours before you can resume what you were transferring. It looks like Mega is more generous right now (I downloaded 18.75GB of data the other day before hitting a wall), but it still has some sort of download quota. And if you want to get past it without waiting, there is only one trick left in your arsenal.
There used to be a few apps that could be used to quietly bypass Mega’s download restriction, but it looks like the service has closed whatever loophole they’ve been using. I tried several tools when I hit the download limit the other day, but none of them were able to get anything from Mega. Bummer.
What really worked was using a VPN to get a new IP address. As soon as I do – I’ll pay for NordVPN , which simplifies the task – I can continue booting from the Mega without problems.
However, there are a few caveats to this trick. First, you probably don’t want to use a free VPN . If you’re so addicted to downloading, then paying for a VPN service that doesn’t track or log everything you do – or uses any other nefarious tactic as long as you use it – costs a few dollars a month, it’ll cost you. You’re also less likely to be restricted by the VPN you pay for than the free one, because using a VPN that slows down or limits your download speed to get around Mega’s restrictions seems a little counterintuitive.
Secondly, you may not have much success if you are trying to download huge files from Mega. I can’t think of why you are downloading, say, a single 15GB file ( wink, wink ), but if you use a tool like MEGAsync to do this, you might have to exit the program as soon as you hit your initial limit , start your VPN and restart the program.
With this, you can restart the download from scratch. I did this in my experiments, which makes it makes no sense to bypass the limit, since you will not be able to download the file until you reach the limit again. In this case, you can just leave your original IP address and wait – don’t leave the app.
That said, if you have a bunch of files, you need to grab Mega and you keep facing an annoying but understandable wall as a free user using a VPN to switch your IP – and just turning on the VPN in the Opera browser . doesn’t count – a great way to convince Mega that you are a new user.