Torrents are one of the best ways to find whatever content you need. There are pc game torrents, movies torrents, and music torrents among many others.
Chances are that if a mainstream multimedia file exists, there is a torrent for it. However, torrenting is not completely safe.
Not only do ISPs track all of your traffic, but you can also be pursued by the government if you try to download files which are ‘copyrighted’. We will be taking you through 3 steps which ensure that you are able to download torrents safely and anonymously.
Use a VPN
One of the first things that you need to do in order to ensure your safety when using a torrent is to hide your online presence. A VPN is a service which routes all incoming and outgoing traffic through a secure server which is in a remote location.
This essentially hides your entire internet browsing information from the government, your ISP, and anyone else who might be watching.
When you are looking for a VPN, there are certain things that you need to be sure of. One of them is that the VPN is not logging any of your activity when you are using the service.
Apart from this, you should also prioritize a VPN which has dedicated P2P servers as those servers will get you higher speeds when downloading files.
Another reason to use a VPN is that your ISP might be throttling your torrent speeds to ease the load on its servers. Using a VPN would allow you to access the maximum possible speeds that your connection can attain.
Considering all the factors above, we recommend CyberGhost VPN as your primary choice for all of your torrenting needs.
Use an AdBlocker
Since torrent sites are largely unregulated and quite a lot of them work privately (and thus cannot utilize services such as Google Adsense), the ads that they host can be quite detrimental to the user sometimes.
There are many phishing scams and malware that can infect your computer if you choose to go ahead with clicking the ads.
One of the simplest things to remember is that if the website was legitimate, it would probably not be advertising on a torrent site and instead using Google Adsense or another reputable service.
Thus, we recommend using an AdBlocker so as to not even see the ads. An AdBlocker would also protect you from annoying pop-ups that have become a staple of most torrent websites.
Lastly, we would also recommend turning your flash off when browsing torrent sites. At the very least, make sure Flash asks for your permission before it is allowed to run.
Most of the malware uses flash vulnerabilities to tap into your system, and this would deter any intrusions.
We recommend using AdGuard as your adblocker as it has all the features you need to ensure a secure torrenting experience.
Use an Anti-Virus
One of the biggest threats that most people seem to be unaware of is that a torrent file could have a virus/malware/Trojan in it.
Even some of the most popular torrents with thousands of seeds can end up having programs which intrude your privacy.
There really is no manual way for you to weed out good torrents from the bad ones. Most viruses are harmless and may do nothing more than slow your computer down a miniscule amount.
However, it is possible to sometimes get infected with malware so intrusive that your entire machine can shut down.
The best course of action that you can take in order to guarantee secure torrenting is to download and install an Anti-Virus.
There are many free Anti-Virus software in the market which can do the job for most people, but you might want to opt for a paid version in order to have the maximum possible security for yourself.
From all the software that we have tested, we recommend you use Norton Security. Although Norton is a paid software, it has one of the biggest libraries and a customizable application to ensure all your security needs are met.
Conclusion
As we have mentioned above, you need to make sure that you have a VPN, AdBlocker, and an Anti-Virus to get the best out of your torrenting experience.
On top of that, one last tip that we can give you is to prioritize torrents which have Multimedia files since executable files are by far the most dangerous.
If you are a person who downloads pc game torrents, you may want to look for setups which have the ‘.rar’ extension to have an extra layer of security between you and any malware/Trojan that may be found in the file.