6 Best Tips To Stay Safe When Torrenting In Canada
Torrenting is quite common in Canada. In fact, torrenting has decreased in recent years due to several torrent sites shutting down as copyright infringements. Still, many Canadians look forward to downloading digital content through these websites.
However, torrenting is potentially a risky affair. It can land you in trouble if you end up downloading applications and media full of malware and viruses. Moreover, you can also get into legal tug-of-war due to licensing and copyright. Due to worldwide legislation passed a few years ago, you are more likely to get caught for unlawful torrenting.
However, taking preventive measures can still avoid any safety and legal issues. For instance, you can use VPN for torrenting in Canada and stay anonymous while downloading data from P2P servers.
ProPrivacy neither justifies nor fortifies using torrents to download copyrighted data. In most countries, torrenting copyright-protected content is felonious and could land you in both civil and criminal legal proceedings.
That said, here are the 6 best tips to stay safe when torrenting in Canada:
Precautionary measures to stay safe while torrenting
The risks attached to torrenting must be taken seriously. But there are several ways to diminish them. Below is the list of our best tips for keeping yourself safe from any potential threat posed by torrenting, and we will discuss each tip separately:
- Get a VPN app for secured torrenting
- Use a sandbox environment for downloading torrents
- Check the seeders’ health to ensure you are downloading a legit torrent
- Install a reliable antivirus
- Go through the comments
- Get into a pro torrent community
Get a VPN app for secured torrenting
Using a VPN to have a safer torrenting experience is like an unsaid rule. A VPN will encrypt all of the outgoing and incoming data for you, which prevents your internet service provider from tracking your activity like which websites you have visited or precisely seeing what you are doing while online. It means that you don’t have to worry a bit about your bandwidth cutting out or the government agencies snooping on you; that is what you are up to.
Connecting to a VPN will also keep the services or websites you visited away from tracing your actual IP location. Therefore, anyone who may be trying to monitor people’s online activities will not be able to have any info about your IP address, instead, they will just get the IP address showing from the VPN server.
Apparently, there is also a targeted procedure that a hacker can use to track down VPN users. This method is known as a time-correlation attack. But fortunately, you can easily avoid it if you only stick to the zero-log VPN services. These VPN services are the A-listed providers within a private community, one main reason why we recommend avid torrenters to stick with a VPN service that provides this assurance.
Disguising your IP location also has many security benefits. Like, when you are torrenting through PTP, you happen to be literally posting your house’s IP address to everyone who is also joining the peer you are using. If even one person operating on that peer is a potential hacker, your devices and your credential information are at risk.
Use a sandbox environment for downloading torrents
This is actually a boosted security precaution, which most people maybe do not need to worry about. However, if you frequently download executable computer files and programs from torrent sites, then probably it is a good idea for you to safeguard yourself this way.
Downloading your files into a sandbox environment will make sure that if any malicious files are present they will not contaminate your whole machine if a virus or malware is accidentally downloaded to your device. This way you will be able to hold a prior check if the file is authentic and without any virus before you install it on your main machine. Sandboxes can prove to be a great tool for you as it allows you to provide a sandboxed environment to keep your PC safe.
Check the seeders’ health to ensure you are downloading a legit torrent
Are you also like the most torrenters, where avoiding malware or any other exploits becomes a primary concern? Well, we have another good news for you; there are multiple ways of detecting malicious seeds and keeping your distance from them.
One of the easiest ways to make sure that you are really downloading the actual file you were trying to find is to search the popular torrents for it. If a torrent file has many or most of the seeders, it is possibly a reliable source.
Install a reliable antivirus
Having trustworthy and premium antivirus software can make you reap several benefits. It’s a good general practice to use an antivirus while surfing the internet. Hackers smartly conceal malware inside torrent files, smoothly infecting your systems which you won’t know about until it’s too late. Cybercriminals know that keeping malware hidden in torrent files can reach the masses with very little effort. Millions of users use torrents to download material from the internet and hackers exploit this opportunity to get into the systems of users with ease.
Go through the comments
Most torrent sites let their users leave comments, good or bad. Taking a look at them is a very quick way to find out the authenticity of the seeds or if it is malevolent. Good-class torrents are usually complemented by the other downloaders too, and so it becomes clear to you very quickly which ones you should spend your time downloading.
To look for real comments, start your search by looking for the content that you need. Next up is, click on that torrent seed that grabbed your attention, scroll down to the end of the page and read what other people have commented!
The last thing, always keep in mind to be attentive and look out for haters and trolls, who might either praise a trash seed or denounce a legitimate seed for no apparent reason.
Get into a pro torrent community
You must have heard about private trackers. These are exclusive closed-door websites with huge torrenting communities established to maintain the legitimacy and quality of torrent files. After joining any of such communities, you will be surprised by the quality and standard of torrent files. Every torrent in these communities is handpicked by members using a stringent moderation process.
Typically, you can only join private trackers through invites. Another frustrating thing is that a one-in-one-out policy governs these communities, so you will have to wait for any member to leave and vacate a spot for you to grab. Fun fact: existing members hardly quit private trackers!
If you luckily manage to receive an invitation and join one of these communities, you will find yourself in a safe environment where the quality of torrents can be trusted. This will keep you safer and less likely to download a malicious torrent file filled with malware, viruses, trojans, and spam.
Wrap Up!
Despite all its benefits, torrenting remains a high-risk pursuit. It poses a severe risk to your online security and makes you vulnerable to getting caught for copyright infringements. So, it’s better to be safe than sorry. That’s why we recommend using a premium VPN for torrenting in Canada. So, get your ExpressVPN subscription and stay safe while downloading content through torrents.