There’s been a lot of controversy over downloading cracked softwares, illegal ones from torrent sites. For years Torrent has served people with its abundant resources including movies, games, software, music and lot more other stuff.
Sep 03, 2020.
Safe torrenting software, such as such as BitTorrent Classic, are needed to send or receive files using the protocol. With over 100 million active torrent programs installed on home computers across the world, the protocol enables efficient distribution.
Jun 05, 2020.
In recent years, torrent sites have been forced to shut down. For this reason, users are unable to download their favorite stuff from the web. But still with different names famous torrent sites have come up in these recent years, helping users to again download all their favorite content on to their PC.
Why torrent sites for downloading?
Many people have different sites to download different things like movies, songs, software, games etc. For them, torrent is just like a supermarket.
Sep 20, 2008. Using TorrentSafe is easy, simply provide a torrent URL link or a.torrent file that you would like to download and our service will go to work downloading your torrent. In addition to privacy, we use top of the line blazing fast servers with high bandwidth, this allows for greater download speeds than most home ISPs.
From the client end, you will get all most everything you want in any Torrent site. This is not all. The main benefit of using torrent sites is the fast downloading speed. The main reason for this is their unique algorithm.
Last but not the least free of cost and availability. You can download anything you want absolutely free of cost and you will get a variety of a specific category as per your choice.
Safety tips
With lots of torrent sites nowadays, accessing the web of torrent sites have become much easier. But as we know due to illegal nature and piracy issues, many countries have banned the use of torrent sites. Also there remains a chance of getting arrested by any government of any country.
To prevent all these issues we recommend the use of a VPN. Also, many torrent sites are filled with malwares and virus affected files, so you should also keep this things in mind and trust few of the major torrent sites for download.
We find a lot of cracked softwares, pirated ones, pre-activated softwares and games. Well, most of them work well, but honestly, many of these applications can lead nightmares for you. Keeping all these risks in mind, here are some safety tips that you should follow before accessing your favorite torrent site:
1. Use VPN
Globally there are so many regions that restrict from using torrent sites, basically to stop piracy. In that case, you can’t access those sites anymore. Apart from the government some network providers also blocked sites for your access. A virtual private network can handle these problems easily.
For using a VPN you will get extra security from leaking your identity or data in the internet world. In addition to that it will hide all your activities and prevent hackers to identify your IP address.
2. Ignore Pirated/Copyright files
There are so many pirated or copyright files available to download. All over the world copyrighted or pirated software downloading is illegal. Just simply think about a software, which is charging a huge amount to access that but a person uploads the same software, same benefits free of cost.
You have to understand that the person who uploaded that must follow illegal ways to crack the license of the original software.
If the software organization can identify you, you might be charged fine or suffer from jail. So this is much better and easy to aware of that kind of pirated or copyrighted files.
3. Be alert from Malware/Virus Affected Files
There might have virus into the software you are downloading from the torrent. There is no way to detect that before downloading.
If you’re trying to download any kind of software containing virus or Malware, that can harm your machine, you may lose your data, your computer may be hacked too.
The only way to prevent this kind of situation is only use trusted Torrent websites.
Tips:
Youtube downloaders will sniffe the download streams from the Youtube page source code. There are different ways to find out the download link. In chrome, if you hit “Ctrl+Shift+I” keys and go to Networks Tab, you can see t he different links through which the audio and video files are loaded. This could be the first start to find the download links.
Or you can go to any online downloader website like Fastest Youtube Downloader to find out the download links and try to search the part of links in the source code of the page, to decipher the mechanism in which the browser decodes the download links.
Worth Reading: Youtube video downloader for PC
In case you have mistakenly downloaded some malware or virus affected software, then you must have a good antivirus software pre-installed on your system to scan your downloaded softwares and take the necessary actions so that your PC might not get affected. 5 Best Torrent Websites 2019
As you all know torrent sites have abundant resources, they also feature some of the best softwares in the market for you to download. Some are original while some are cracked but yes it has got any and every types of software available in the market.
For downloading, only you need a stable internet connection and a small effort to search for your required software at the torrent site. Hundreds of download links get generated and you can download your software via the magnetic link from the site which works like a charm.
If you are just thinking about which torrent sites are reliable and which are not among your known then don’t worry. We are providing you the 5 top most Torrent websites for software downloading along with their positive and negative points. We hope that this will help you to surf Torrent easily and safely.
1. YTS
YTS is one of the most popular names among the torrent sites. This website is mainly known for the movies downloads, but you will getsoftware as well, though this website is banned in various countries around the globe. As previously mentioned, you can pass this problem by using VPNs.
YTS gives you the opportunity to choose the quality of the movie you want. The dark theme of this website can also attract you.
It’s smooth user interface and availability of high definition movies takes this website in the top list. But it has slow software torrents and the availability of software is very less in the compare of movies.
Website link: https://yts.am/
2. LimeTorrents
LimeTorrent is mainly known for its wide range of Links. Here for a particular software you will get many numbers of links that host that software you want, you can pick as per your requirement from the options.
Links of Games, software, ebooks, movies, music are available here. But this website doesn’t have that file. It only contained the links.
This website suggests which file is suitable for which age people. Because there may have any file for adults only. In that case, LimeTorrent will be lot more helpful for you.
The only disadvantage of this site is that there are only links. No actual files are available here and there’s no guarantee if all links lead you to a reliable software file.
Website link:https://www.limetorrents.cc/
3. Torrents.me
Just like the other torrent sites, you will also get TV shows, movies, software, games, music, and all here. During the last few months, this website has gained a quite good feedback across the web.
Torrentz.me is trying to get a good rank through their metasearch links and magnet torrent link facility, but their Complex user interface and slow downloading speed is dragging their position back.
Website link: https://torrents.me/
4. Rarbg
Simply you can say Rarbg is a godown of healthy torrent files. You will get movies, music, software, games to download totally free of cost. For the latest movies, shows, trailers it has a different page. So you can easily sort out your needs from others.
Rarbg also has the top list under different categories for your easy search. As a conclusion this website provides you totally a shorted list that you can find your requirement easily from a limitless stock.
Through a VPN you can bypass all the restrictions and can access this website easily. As previously mentioned it has a blog section for news articles and TV shows.
In return of all these high-quality services, you just only tolerate some ads and a non-intuitive interface.
Website link: https://rarbg.to/index43.php
5. TorrentDB
TorrentDB is also well known for downloading softwares. Not only software, but you also get e-books, movies, music, and all just like other torrent sites. You will definitely enjoy the site’s user-friendly interface and the availability of files.
But the only problem is that it works only in Windows system and the interface is quite boring and dull.
Website link: http://torrentdb.li/
So, here were our top 5 torrent sites for downloading softwares, as most of them remains free you can try out all of them and check which one pleases you the most. Also, you must check out which site has more download links available and providing you hassle-free download options as well.
Accessing torrent without safety measures might prove to be harmful, so do take the necessary measures as mentioned earlier and fearlessly access your favorite torrent sites and download all your required softwares absolutely for free.
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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.
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.
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.
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
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).
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
Best Torrenting Program
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.
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.
Safe Torrenting Program
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.
Safest Torrenting Software Reddit
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).