A Guide to Torrenting

So you wanna pirate something online but you're not sure how to start. Or maybe you already found something but it's a .torrent file and you have no idea what to do with it. There's many good torrenting guides out there online (some of which I will link at the end) so I will try to keep mine brief and focused on essentials only. I encourage you to treat it as a jumping point to learn more elsewhere in the future, rather than a be-all and end-all of torrenting knowledge.

Why torrent?

Torrenting is pretty much the best way to download big files. Downloading things directly on your browser is perfectly fine for small files, such as images or audio files. But you might've noticed trying to download anything bigger - for example an .iso file - takes ages. And then your download might also fail by the end, forcing you to start all over again. Torrenting is generally faster, more reliable, and allows you to pause and resume your download whenever you want without corrupting your file. Also you don't have to deal with one fucktillion ad pop-ups, which is always a plus.

Is it legal?

Short answer: It depends on where you live.

Long answer: In some countries it's 100% legal and the government doesn't give a shit. In others it's in the gray area, as torrenting is used not just for piracy but for legal downloads as well. And then, some countries will absolutely fuck your shit up if you even think about torrenting (this is an exaggeration of course - just don't get caught). And even if they don't and it's completely legal, your ISP might still have blocks or limits on your torrenting speed. But don't worry, there's a way to counter all of that - a good VPN.

You should check what your country's laws on torrenting and piracy are so that you can make informed decisions.

Which VPN should I choose?

As mentioned in the section above, VPNs are a useful torrenting tool - especially if torrenting and/or piracy are illegal where you live or if your ISP somehow blocks it. And even if that's not the case, it's still a good idea to use it to hide your true IP from other peers when torrenting.

Generally, you should stay away from fully free VPNs. They're pretty much always either scams or malware. There's many paid VPNs you can choose from so if that's something you can invest in, do your own research to ensure you pick one that works for you the best.

However, if you're broke like me - there's still options! Many paid VPNs are actually freemium. Meaning that, alongside paid plans they also offer a free plan. One such VPN I can personally recommend is Proton VPN. Their free plan lets you connect to servers in 5 randomly selected countries and you can download their app on all the big operating systems.

UPDATE: It has come to my attention that Proton VPN has gotten rid of the ability to use p2p on their free plan. While I still recommend using it for things like changing your location to unlock geolocked content, you should probably look for a different VPN when it comes to torrenting purposes. I will do the same and, if I manage to find anything, update this guide once again! I will however keep the links to Proton's guides at the end cause they still contain valuable information on the topic.

Use an antivirus, numbnuts!

I'll be honest with you - the only antivirus software I have on my main laptop is Microsoft Defender Antivirus and Windows Firewall. Yes, the shit that comes by default with Windows 10 anyway. I'm generally very cautious with what I install so i've never had any issues. Well, at least in my adult life, because I wasn't always as careful as a child... Either way, what I'm trying to say is that due to this I can't really help you much with choosing your antivirus. In my opinion, nowadays the built-in antivirus on Windows is pretty solid - IF you know what you're doing. I even got some false positives with it in the past, so you could say it's too secure.

I do however use one more thing to scan any suspicious files. Virus Total is a site on which you can scan files through not one, not two, not even just three, but sixty one different antiviruses. So no matter what your antivirus is, I recommend using Virus Total as well to scan, amongst other things, your torrent files.

Which torrent client?

I'll get straight to the point, the one torrent client I can recommend to you with clear conscience is qBittorrent. You can read more about why that's the case on your own time - since this guide is already getting longer than I anticipated - but it's generally considered to be the best and most reliable torrent client out there.

I might write another guide on how to use qBittorrent specifically in the future. And if I do, it will be linked here. One thing I will mention now though is that you should make sure to bind your torrent client to your VPN, to ensure torrenting only happens when the VPN is active. For more info on that, see the further reading links at the end.

Seeding is sharing (and sharing is caring)!

So we're all set, right? You got your VPN, your antivirus, your torrent client. You might even already have the .torrent file you wanna download too. You can just do your own thing now.

Well, yes and no.

You can start downloading your file now but remember to seed it afterwards! It's good netiquette to do so - without any seeders torrenting would be impossible.

Links

Recommended tools from this guide:
> Virus Total
> qBittorrent

Further reading + other tools:
> Proton VPN's ultimate guide to torrenting
> Proton VPN's article on how to torrent safely with a VPN
> r/Piracy's wiki with information on not just torrenting but piracy in general
> Search plugins for qBittorrent

I might add more relevant links to this section in the future.