Whether you’re totally new to torrenting, or a seasoned pro looking to take your privacy to the next level, this guide is for you.
Sep 03, 2020.
We know that digital privacy and new technology has a learning curve and can seem intimidating when you first dive in. This guide is intended to be a comprehensive introduction on how to stay safe an secure while downloading torrents online.
Aug 23, 2019. A VPN will hide your location and torrent history to safeguard you against any legal issues, as well as from hackers. Using a VPN in conjunction with a good torrent client is the only way you can guarantee safety while torrenting. With that in mind, we’re looking at the best torrent and P2P clients that are safe to.
- Jan 25, 2008.
- Aug 31, 2020.
What you’ll learn: Everything from the basics of how torrent activity is monitored, how to protect your identity while downloading, and how to avoid malware, viruses and other security threats.
Topics:
- The Legality of torrents
- Torrent Monitoring
- Challenges
- IP Address
- Encryption
- Solutions
- VPN
- Proxy
- Nonsolutions
- Torrent Clients
- Viruses & Malware
- Realtime detection
- Antivirus
The Legality of BitTorrent
The torrent p2p protocol (bittorrent) is a fully legal file-sharing technology. It’s important to understand the distinction between the legality of the technology itself and how you choose to use it. Whether your own torrent downloads are legal vs. illegal depends entirely on what files you’re torrenting, who owns the rights (or if they’re public domain), and where you’re located. Different countries have different laws when it comes to filesharing/copyright issues.
To put it simply:
- Bittorrent itself is a legal technology. It is a decentralized protocol for transferring large files efficiently and quickly.
- If you share copy-protected files, you could be breaking the law depending on what country you live in and whether you were an uploader or just a leacher.
- Most penalties for downloading copy-protected files are civil (like a fine) rather than criminal, but local laws vary widely between countries.
How to find legal torrents:
There are dozens of sites online that index/host 100% legal torrent files. Most legal torrents are either files who’s copyright has expired (and are now public domain) or files that have been released with a license that permits free and open sharing/distribution.
There are dozens of sites online that index/host 100% legal torrent files. Most legal torrents are either files who’s copyright has expired (and are now public domain) or files that have been released with a license that permits free and open sharing/distribution.
Here are resources to find the best legal torrent sites:
While there are thousands of fully legal and public domain torrents available online, many bittorrent users also knowingly or accidentally download copy-protected. This may be completely legal (for personal use) in some countries or could be a violation of copyright law in others.
Because of the messy gray areas, uneven enforcement and unclear licensing of most public torrents, many bittorrent users take steps to prevent monitoring and protect their privacy while downloading.
How Torrents Are Monitored
BitTorrent’s greatest strength (distributed filesharing) is also it’s greatest privacy weakness. Torrent files can be downloaded in pieces from many (sometimes hundreds) of seeders at once. This lets you download large files like 4k videos incredibly fast. But it comes with an important tradeoff:
Torrent downloads are easy to monitor because all IP addresses sharing a file are public!
There are dozens of organizations that monitor torrent downloads from public trackers. These include:
- Researchers
- Internet Service Providers
- Law Enforcement Agencies
- Governmental Organizations
- Law Firms and Patent Trolls
- Data-mining firms and websites
Some sites like IKnowWhatYouDownload even make their data public. For example, here’s 1400+ IP addresses that have downloaded a certain adult torrent recently (and that’s just in the USA).
There 2 ways that your torrent history is tracked:
- Public IP-address: A numerical address that can expose your location and even exact identity. Every member of a torrent swarm can easily see your real IP address (if you don’t hide it).
- Direct Monitoring: Your Internet Service Provider and/or network administrator (at school for example) have direct access to your data stream. They can perform manual or automated packet inspection to see that you’re downloading torrents.
The Challenges of private torrenting
IP-address monitoring
This is the #1 way torrents are tracked, mostly because it’s so darn easy. Thanks to centralized torrent trackers as well as the DHT protocol, simple software can quickly connect to a swarm and log all the IP addresses.
And if you don’t take steps to hide your real IP address, then this could be you:
How to prevent IP address monitoring: It’s not that hard. Yes, peers must be able to see an IP address when you connect, but it doesn’t have to be your real one. You can use a non-logging VPN or proxy to route your torrent traffic through an IP address that can’t be traced to you. So peers only see the VPN server, not your real location & identity.
Direct Monitoring by your Internet Provider
Have you ever received a warning letter from your internet provider for downloading a specific torrent? They may have been notified by a 3rd-party based on your IP address (as discussed above). It’s also possible they directly monitor your traffic and noticed torrent activity.
In fact, many ISP’s worldwide choose to monitor, throttle or completely block torrent activity using sophisticated firewalls and automated deep packet inspection to spy on your internet usage.
They can also hijack your DNS lookups and browser searches to see if you’re visiting torrent sites.
How to prevent packet inspection: Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN). It will wrap your internet traffic in a layer of unbreakable encryption so even your ISP can’t see what you’re doing online.
The Tools: The best methods for secure torrents
Here you’ll find all of the most common tools you can use to keep your torrent activity private and secure from monitoring agencies and even your internet provider. They’re ranked from best-to-worst
Virtual Private Network (VPN):Best Option
![Torrent Torrent](https://www.best-bittorrent-vpn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Torrent-Country-Map.png)
VPNs are the most commonly used privacy tool in the torrent community. The reasoning is simple: VPNs are easy to use, cheap, and very effective.
Most important rule: Always use a torrent-friendly VPN that doesn’t keep logs.
How it works:
When you connect to a VPN server (using simple software) it will do 3 things:
- Route all your internet traffic through their server
- Assign you a new public IP address (that is nearly impossible to trace to you)
- Encrypt all your traffic so your Internet Provider can’t read it
Which VPN to use?
We’ve tested dozens of VPNs. Here are 5 great options (all of them keep no logfiles whatsoever).
Safest Torrent Client 2019
How to set it up
All these VPNs come with their own easy-to-use software. Simply sign up, download and install the software, and connect to a server in a torrent-friendly country. For extra security, turn on the kill-switch to prevent IP leaks.
We’ve also got complete setup guides for popular torrent clients including:
SOCKS Proxy
The closest alternative is a proxy service. It’s kind of like VPN-lite. You configure the proxy inside your torrent client and it hides your IP address from peers just like a VPN. One key difference is that most torrent proxy services don’t have encryption. Instead, you can use the built-in protocol encryption in your torrent client.
One nice thing about using a proxy is once you set it up it just works. There’s no need to turn it on or load software every time you want to start a torrent.
Which Proxy Service to use?
There are two very important factors when choosing a proxy service:
- It MUST be SOCKS (not HTTP) or it won’t hide your IP address from peers
- It should be a logless proxy service
Don’t worry, torrent-friendly SOCKS proxy providers are easy to find. In fact, several of our favorite VPN services actually include SOCKS proxy access in every subscription.
These are the best VPNs with a SOCKS5 proxy:
How to set it up:
When you subscribe to proxy service, they’ll provide you with your login credentials (username/password) as well as the port number and proxy address. That’s all you need to setup your torrent client. Proxies are most secure when used with: uTorrent, Vuze, Deluge or QBittorrent.
You can add RC4 encryption to your proxy using your torrent client’s p2p encryption settings. This isn’t as secure as a VPN but may be good enough to circumvent firewalls and throttling.
Seedbox: if price is no object
If you are a high-volume torrenter and need to meet seeding quotas, you might consider a seedbox.
Seedboxes are basically a torrent client installed on a remote VPS that runs 24/7. You control it from a web interface and it downloads/seeds your files from the server. You can then transfer the files to your computer via https.
Seedboxes are paid services and quite expensive (typically 3-5x the cost of a VPN).
Seedbox Pros:
- Files download really fast
- You get a lot of upstream bandwidth
- You can seed files without taking up space on your home computer
Seedbox Cons:
- Expensive. $20+/month is typical
- Have to transfer files twice (to seedbox then to your computer)
- Less secure than VPN and many services are shady
- Most Seedboxes only allow private trackers
The Worst Tools: ineffective or dangerous
There are several less-effective tools that people sometimes try to use.
Best case, they’re slow or cumbersome. Worst-case, they’re completely useless or even dangerous. These are the tools you should avoid:
Blocklists (Peerblock/PeerGuardian/iBlocklist)
Blocklists are basically spreadsheets of large numbers of ip addresses. The idea is that if you can block the ‘bad’ torrent peers, you can only connect to safe ones. This sounds nice in theory but in reality most blocklists don’t actual block the peers you need to worry about (like torrent trolls) and instead just reduce speeds and number of connections.
Blocklists also don’t hide your IP address from trackers (which bad actors can scrape). Finally, they don’t have any encryption whatsoever.
Don’t bother with them. Seriously. They’re useless.
More detail: The truth about Peerblock
Non-SOCKS Proxies
There are stories all over Reddit and other forums from people who grabbed some free HTTP proxy credentials off a website and soon after received a warning letter from their ISP.
You should never ever use any sort of HTTP or HTTPS proxy for torrent privacy. They simply do not work.
Why: HTTP proxies can only transport HTTP data (like the content of a website). They are incompatible with p2p protocols like BitTorrent. If you try to use an HTTP proxy for peer communications, your torrent client will just ignore the proxy, exposing your true IP address to peers and offering no protection whatsoever.
Always. Use. SOCKS. Proxies.
i2p
i2P is an anonymity network that routes traffic through a cluster of remote servers, mixing your traffic with other traffic. In theory it’s a good idea and it actually does work.
The problem is that it’s extremely slow. You can expect speeds around 50kbps (not suitable for downloading video or other large files).
If you want to check it out, the easiest way is the i2p plugin for Vuze.
Malware, Phishing & Viruses
Beyond the legal & privacy risks, downloading torrents from public trackers can have other security risks as well. These include the threat of malware & phishing ads as well as viruses and trojans (embedded in files).
Fortunately if you’re aware of the threats and take common-sense steps to combat them, you can mitigate much of the risks.
Browser Threats: Malware, Phishing & Malicious Ads
Most blackhat torrent sites (those that host primarily pirated content) are tough to monetize by traditional means. They can’t run google or Amazon ads to generate revenue, so they’re forced to deal with some sketchy clients to make money.
Unfortunately this puts you at risk.
Commons malicious ad types you may run into:
- Cryptocurrency miners (browser malware)
- Phishing sites (pose as a legit site and steal login credentials)
- Virus Sites (get you to download malware or viruses disguised as legit files).
- Ads with javascript or flash-based exploits to hack outdated browsers
Frankly it’s exhausting dealing with the garbage ads on these sites, and nobody actually wants to click them because we all know they’re trash sites.
Here’s how to deal with them:
- Keep your browser updated. Make sure you have auto-updates enabled for your preferred browser. Don’t delay updates. Most people don’t realize that browser (and other software) updates frequently fix security flaws and bugs rather than just adding new features.
- Disable flash. it’s an outdated technology and has huge security flaws. Just disable it altogether, or at least make sure flash scripts don’t run without a prompt.
- Use a separate browser for torrent sites. You can use different browser software just for torrenting, and keep the settings pretty locked down. For example, disable all cookies, flash & javascript.
- Use an Adblocker. You can’t click ads if you can’t see them. Use Ad-block or another ad blocking software to remove or minimize ads. Some VPNs such as Cyberghost even have ad-blocking built in.
- Use real-time virus protection. You need an antivirus that can detect viruses and malicious scripts in realtime (before they infect your computer). Invest in a premium antivirus like Avast Pro or Mcafee. Windows Defender is a free option that’s bundled with windows 10 and now offers realtime virus protection. And don’t be that idiot that tries to pirate antivirus software (it’s obviously loaded with viruses).
Trojans & Viruses in torrent files
Torrent sites and ads aren’t the only threat. Hackers frequently upload malicious software and trojans to torrent sites. It’s usually embedded in torrents with executable installation files such as video games or software.
To avoid trojans completely, you’d be smart to just avoid any torrent with an executable file (stick with media files like video).
If that’s too restrictive for you, make sure you have a good (paid) antivirus, and scan every torrent file before you install it. Seriously, there’s some frightening spyware out there, frequently bundled with games on torrent sites.
Another option is to just run your torrented files through virustotal, a free online virus scanner that checks files against dozens of antivirus scans.
Summary & additional resources
As we’ve learned, it’s possible to dramatically improve the security and privacy of your torrents with a few simple tools. By taking a multi-layered approach, you can add additional redundancy and better privacy.
For example, you could use a VPN and Proxy together so that if one fails, the other should still work to keep your real IP address hidden from torrent spies.
The best tools:
- VPN
- SOCKS5 Proxy
- Seedbox
The Worst Tools:
- HTTP Proxies
- i2P
- Thoughts & prayers
And no matter which privacy method you choose, you should try to add some level of encryption for your torrents.
Here are some step-by-step setup guides:
And once you’ve set everything up, you’ll need to test it to make sure everything is working.
Here’s how to check your torrent IP address and verify the VPN is working.
Do you have any comments, questions or tips we missed? Let us know below!
Ryan McCarthy
Ryan is the editor and head reviewer. He's been a tech geek and digital privacy enthusiast since the Y2k freakout in '99. When not writing BitTorrent tutorials, he can usually be found sipping a lager or playing pickup football (the real kind).
Torrents are simply awesome! BitTorrent file sharing protocol allows easy file sharing amongst its countless users, making the torrent sharing process seamless.
However, you cannot download files as you would normally do, but instead, you would require a special computer program. These programs are called torrent clients, software that requires a link to the torrent file that you wish to download.
There are many torrent clients available, but not all of them are reliable. Moreover, there are high chances of downloading viruses and malicious contents with your torrent download. For this reason, it is always advised to use a VPN for torrent to securely download torrent and mask you IP at the same time.
Note: Our top VPN pick for downloading torrents is Ivacy, enabling you to download torrent anonymously, including features that will notify you if the file is infected with viruses like Trojans.
Fortunately, there are a few reliable, paid as well as free, torrent clients. In the list below, we are noting down our top picks of the best torrent clients that you can use for downloading torrents in 2019.
Best Torrent Clients 2019
1. Bitport
Bitport.io is a simple to use a cloud-based torrent downloader that has excellent support for popular media devices like Apple TV and Chromecast. The good thing is that they offer limited time trial in which they offer a 1GB of storage space, so you can try out their service to see if it fits your needs.
However, as expected, you don’t get all the fancy features in the trial version and you are limited to just downloading one torrent a day without virus protection over an unencrypted connection. You would also be bargaining on downloading speeds, as you wouldn’t be on the priority list unless you purchase their subscriptions.
The least expensive monthly plan begins at just 5$ and you get 30 GB of cloud storage with boundless downloading limit and all the files are downloaded through Bitports secure servers with uncompromised downloading speeds.
2. qBittorrent
qbittorrent is a very a popular torrent software for both Mac and Windows. The reason is that it’s totally free and doesn’t have annoying ads you see on most torrent clients. The user interface seems a bit outdated, but despite that, everything works the way it should.
Now don’t think you’ll be missing out on the features, as there a plenty of it available, like download prioritization, torrent creation along with a built-in media player. The software is open sourced, meaning that anyone can create plugins, remove bugs and contribute to the overall betterment of the client.
3. uTorrent
uTorrent was one of the best torrent clients of its time offering some of the best features. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a very popular client. It’s just that lately the software has become a bit heavy because of the advertisements being displayed. We get that you need ads to support the software, but there other torrent clients that at least offer more features.
- Read to get a better picture of this famous client.
This software offers nothing fancy. It’s just a regular, well-built torrent software, which is compatible with Mac, Windows, Linux, Android and offers all the basic features like priority download and automatic bandwidth management.
They do offer a few more features, but you will have to pay a premium to avail features like add free user experience, virus protection, CyberGhost VPN connection, and the ability to watch torrents without having to wait for them to download.
And all this for a hefty price of 69.95 a year. However, if you really hate ads, we would recommend getting just the stand-alone advertisement free subscription for 4.95 a year.
4. Deluge
Deluge is another great open source torrent software with a minimalistic user interface. This simplicity of the design also contributes to the overall functionality of the tool, as it is very lightweight and doesn’t hog up your memory.
This software is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux. It is also one of the most ideal torrent clients for users that don’t want to deal with annoying advertisements all the time, while still enjoying basic torrent software features like prioritizing and scheduled downloads.
Also, read our .
5. Transmission
Transmission is great for Apple users as it was originally developed as a torrent software for Mac operating system, but since then it has been made available for Windows as well. Being an open sourced software means there are no ads and they certainly don’t bundle any third party toolbars and software.
Just like other popular torrent clients, Transmission is not very power hungry. It’s designed to be light on the memory while offering all the features like web seed support, individual torrent speed throttling and many more, that any avid torrent user would appreciate. We must recommend you to use Transmission VPN and torrent safely.
6. Boxopus
Boxopus is an online cloud-based torrent client just like Bitport.io, offering similar features. If you want to try out the service then you’re out of luck as they don’t offer a free trial.
However, if you’re really tempted then you can give the service a go for $1.49 a week, which is really not that bad. However, if you are satisfied with their service then you definitely want to go with their 3-month plan or yearly plan that goes for $14.49 and $49.99 respectively.
One thing that Boxopus offers better than Bitport.io is its ability to save torrents on to Google and box drive, which is somewhat convenient if you don’t have a lot of storage space to spare. Boxopus is also supported on multiple devices including a supported Android application so you’re not only bound to using a computer.
7. Vuze
With all the overwhelming amount of features, is definitely not for casual users as the interface is quite complicated. However, an experienced user might find it very useful as it provides a slew of downloading statistics.
Along with having broad downloading information, some of the most notable features include the ability to connect Vuze to your VPN adapter, Metasearch for content discovery, remote management and much more.
See also:
![Safest Torrent Client Safest Torrent Client](/uploads/1/1/8/0/118005800/399793216.jpg)
8. Bittorrent
Bittorrent was one of the first clients created for file sharing over the Bittorrent protocol. It is similar to the uTorrent protocol that is because it is owned by BitTorrent. The client itself is a revamped version of uTorrent that will run on all major operating system like Mac, Windows, Linux, as well as Android.
Like other commercial torrent clients, Bittorrent is free to use. However, again the caveat is that there are going to be advertisements popping up from time to time, which does get annoying.
Unless you buy their advertisement free version for $4.95 a year or the pro version, which offers extra features like virus and malware protection, media format conversion, customer support, and streaming content instantly without having to wait, but this will cost you 19.99 a year. Other than that, it’s a fairly functional and standard client that gets the job done.
9. Bitlord
Bitlord is a client you don’t really hear a lot about and frankly, you should, considering that you don’t mind advertisements. The client has some cool features and one of them is really worth mentioning as you can stream torrents on your Chromecast device so you can watch it on your TV.
The client is pretty straightforward and comes with a built-in player with subtitle integration so you can watch movies right from the application. You can also look up various torrent files like games and movies through the given search bar and read or leave comments for other users. The latter is extremely convenient and you don’t have to gamble between which ones to download and which ones to avoid.
10. Bitcomet
BitComet is in no way a lightweight client and is only available for Windows operating systems. The interface is very complicated and cluttered, which does put off new users as they tend to prefer a much simpler user interface like qbittorrent or uTorrent.
But if you’re comfortable with a complicated UI, then BitComet does offer few nifty features like a built-in web browser. You can look up torrents without leaving the application and the ability to download the starting and ending of torrent files is very convenient for on the fly previewing. Get to know more about this client in our .
11. Halite
Halite is a really minimalistic and back to the basic kind of torrent client. Its interface is really simple and ideal for casual or new torrent users. Being an open source client it has all the basic features you would expect from your average runs of the mill client like magnet support, torrent creation, and queue management.
Despite being a functional client that gets the job done, the fate of this client is uncertain as we haven’t seen any updates since late 2015, which is probably why the software isn’t compatible on Mac. But for now, it works great with Windows and gets the job done.
12. Webtorrent
There is also a desktop version available for Mac, Windows, and Linux operating system. But you must be wondering why I would get the desktop version when I can use it on any web browser regardless of the device. Well, the reason is that the client is even easier to use and allows fast streaming, which means you can skip to your favorite part of the movie without having to wait indefinitely.
13. FrostWire
FrostWire is an awesome little free torrent client that is supported on all major operating systems like Windows, Android, Linux, and Mac. Despite being free, there are no advertisements which are really nice.
The client has a conveniently built-in search feature that allows you to search for torrent files from various torrent websites. Another cool feature lets users listen to free music through internet radio.
Along with such features, FrostWire also has basic features like bandwidth throttling, preview while downloading an individual file downloading. This allows you to select files that you want to download instead of the entire torrent package.
Why use a Torrent Client?
Torrents files are a bit different from your normal files and require a special program to download. These files have a TORRENT file extension and can be downloaded through a torrent client. These clients also enable users to monitor, prioritize and create their own torrent files to be shared with countless users all around the world.
How to use a torrent client?
All torrent clients work pretty much the same way, some may have a bit more bells and whistles than the other. Torrent clients require a link to the file that you want to download, while the client itself manages all the rest. Users can tweak around with settings like bandwidth throttling and managing queues to their liking.
Reddit Reviews
Safest Torrent Client Mac
Now there’s not one torrent client that we could rely on, partially because there’s no guarantee that your favorite torrent clients are going to be available forever. However, Reddit users seem to favor qbittorent over other popular torrent clients like uTorrent.
Best Safest Torrent Client
Comment from discussion shaioneix’s comment from discussion 'What is the best Torrent Client?'.
Safest Torrent Client 2019
Comment from discussion JoeJoe-a-GoGo’s comment from discussion 'What is the best Torrent Client?'.
Conclusion
The existence of torrent clients is definitely uncertain, but fortunately, there is an abundance of torrents software available. The only thing that users look for when choosing a torrent client, is how lightweight and easy to use it is. No one wants to compromise on the performance of their computers with clunky and unreliable software.
What Is The Safest Torrent Client
We mentioned some of the best torrent clients that we thought deserved a chance on our list based on what their performance, price and what others thought of it. We know that we have not covered all the torrent clients and we might have not mentioned your favorites.
What are some of your favorites? We’ll absolutely love to know and share them in our future articles.