Torrenting is a great way of sharing small bits of a larger to facilitate potentially high download speeds. The technology has been around for long, and it has continued to grow despite government efforts and the rise of streaming services.

Downloading torrents could result in a terrible experience, and practising it on an unguarded internet connection places you at the peril of legal dispute as well as cyber intrusions.

If you aspire to torrent anonymously and without seating your device at risk, you should prefer using a high-end stable VPN. VPNs encrypt your internet traffic so that no one can recognise what’s your online activity. If you inadvertently download a copyrighted data or content while using a VPN, probably you won’t experience any desist applications in the email.

Unfortunately, many risks accompany the peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing. This ranges from your privacy (peers can see your IP address) to copyright issues. These and more have led most users to turn to torrenting VPNs like ExpressVPN (review) for privacy and security.

How to Torrent Safely

Is Torrenting Legal?

If you are torrenting without any security, your primary concern arises as copyright trolls. These businesses, ordinarily acting on side of big entertainment studios and music tags, are overly assertive and could target you even in case if you have download only a non-copyrighted content. Results differ from notification letters to large penalties and even ending up having time in the jail— certainly not agreeable things to perceive.

Torrenting is a completely legal technology. However, millions of users around the world use it to share pirated content, which is illegal. This has led to a crackdown by governments to combat losses on the side of copyright owners, and you can easily get a cease mail from your ISP.

Torrenting itself isn’t banned, but downloading unauthorized copyrighted content is. It’s not invariably directly self-evident which content is legal to torrent and which is not. Some files fall in a grey area, so you may find yourself unconsciously on the opposite side of the law.

Most torrent users, therefore, turn to VPNs for privacy, anonymity, and security. Of course, we do not support copyright infringement, but online privacy and security should be a priority for everybody.

How to Torrent Safely

Using a VPN is the only way you can hide your online activities and your real IP address while torrenting – Tor browser is not effective for torrents.
VPNs work by encrypting your traffic and then routing it through a secure tunnel to a VPN server of your choice. This VPN server then masks your real IP address and gives you a new one corresponding to the choice of server location.

Through the encryption offered, your ISP won’t be able to see your online activities – all they can see is some garbled mess! The fact that you have also changed your IP address means that your peers can’t see you, and copyright trolls can’t trace you back to your ISP.

Why you need a VPN for Torrenting

• Unblock Torrent Websites

Many ISPs across the world block torrent sites together with their mirrors to comply with court orders and government bans. This means that in various countries like the UK, you can’t access torrent files even when they are legal. Well, unless you have a VPN.

A VPN will reroute your traffic from the ISP and automatically change the DNS servers you are using, avoiding any blocks put in place.

• Torrent Anonymously

Remember that your peers and other third-parties can see your IP address. Copyright trolls also monitor torrent files and activities, and so they can send an email to your ISP (who will then forward it to you).

Changing your IP address to a shared one through a zero-logs provider like ExpressVPN can ensure that there are no traces of your activities.

• Avoid ISP Throttling

ISPs don’t like torrent traffic, and so they tend to throttle connections that are torrenting too much. This can be easily avoided by encrypting your traffic. After you connect to a server, they won’t know what you are accessing when you are connected.

How to Choose a VPN for Torrenting

Different VPNs are suitable for different purposes, although the most popular ones try to provide an all-round solution. However, it’s important to be careful as even some popular VPN providers don’t allow P2P traffic on their network.

To help you get started, here are a few things you should consider:
⦁ Allows P2P / torrenting
⦁ Doesn’t keep any logs (to avoid any traces)
⦁ Has servers near you (for fast and stable connections)
⦁ Offers good speeds (VPNs tend to slow speeds)
⦁ Solid security (AES 256-bit encryption)
⦁ Has a Kill switch

In-Brief

In a nutshell, whenever you are torrenting, you are fundamentally on the thin ice. While torrenting isn’t positively illegal or threatening, you need to acknowledge all the plausible risks before you sneak in deeper waters. Protection must be your priority when you experience P2P.

Finally, remember to always turn on your VPN before you open a torrent site or start your BitTorrent client. Also, enable the app’s kill switch feature to ensure that you don’t suffer from accidental exposure.