how can I be safe while downloading torrents?

[frank]

I recently updated my Vuze and now have the ability to view other IP addresses of people who are uploading torrents that I have in my library. Once I saw that the IP addresses were real, I quickly realized how easy it was to track anyone who is working with torrents.
What is stopping any person from simply typing in my IP and finding out where I am located? Can I prevent this???

 

[CharlieKelly]

Fight for your rights in law, and then download what's legally yours.

 

[johntrottier]

The most the average person can find out by typing in your IP address on a search engine like "whois" is who your ISP is. They cannot get your address, phone number or name.
Your ISP is the only one who can connect you to an IP address, and he will not release that information unless pressed to do so by law enforcement or a legal subpoena.

There are various ways to hide your IP address by going through proxy servers. How effective they are is open to question, but they at least make whoever is trying to track you down jump through a few more hoops.

Of more immediate concern is that torrents are notorious (especially ones from "those sites" wink) for bringing along extra payloads in terms of viruses and malware. More than one person has downloaded a torrent file only to find they also loaded a trojan that turned over their computer to a botnet.
At the very least, run a good antivirus program. For increased safety, load a Linux distro on your box and use it when you download.
Then scan all your files with Clam AV while still in Linux. Only when all shows clear do you look at those files with a windows box.

Be Careful

 

[RainbowDash1]

Use Piratebay, alright? And only download torrents that have a HIGH number of seeds. Also, pay attention to the ones with a purple or green skull next to em. That means they're trusted people, and their torrents are legit. If ya don't use Piratebay, then thats your choice.

But the MOST important step is to use an external hard drive. Like uh..Get a GoFlex hard drive, and put all your torrents on it. When ya dont use the torrents, unplug the external hard drive. I know how you can get carried away with it, right? Like ya do it so much, you got torrents all over the place and ya cant keep track of em all. But TRY.

A new craze now is that people are usin' USB flash drives now. For people that have wi-fi, they can download the torrents to the flash drive, and take the flash drive wherever they go.


See, what they do is if they suspect anything fishy goin' on, or if you're accused of a crime, they're gonna go look up your IP address for stuff like child porn, terrorist activity, all that stuff. And what happens is they look up a list of numbers, right? And your IP address is one of those numbers. Its in a database. So all they gotta do is click on your IP address and see all the files you downloaded. That's how they detect piracy. But if ya use an external hard drive and unplug it from time to time, they can't detect the files. They're not on the computer, right? They're on a SEPARATE device that they don't know about.