Privacy Tools

Is torrenting legal or illegal?

A straightforward question with no unambiguous answer. Torrenting itself isn’t illegal, but downloading unofficial copyrighted material is. It’s not always immediately apparent which content is legal to torrent and which isn’t. Some fall in a grey area, so you may easily find yourself unwittingly on the wrong side of the law.

Better safe then sorry

Even if you only download torrents from reliable sources, someone else can steal your data and use for his/her financial gain. There is a whole market for selling your data and most of us are giving them away very easily.
However, there are a few basic steps to take to protect your privacy and data.

Browsing security 101

• If you use a standard browser, clear your browsing history. Either have it set automatically, or do it regularly. There are also specialized browsers, such as Brave, which automatically blocks ads and trackers, making it faster and safer than your current browser. 
• Some say that those three passwords – “admin“, “12345” and “password” combined form over 90% of all passwords used worldwide, making it even easier for hackers to access your data. Don´t be 9 out of 10 and choose a strong, unique password for every web you log into and change it frequently, use a reliable password manager such as KeePass, so you don´t have to remember them all.
• When you visit a web page, your browser sends information about its configuration, for example add-ons it runs. If this combination of information is unique, it may be possible to identify and track you without using cookies. That is why free software like Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin come handy. They not only respect your freedom, but your privacy also and they work great together.

What happens with torrents in the cloud?

Cloud torrenting is private, secure and lightning fast. If you select a torrent that another user has already downloaded, it will become available for streaming instantly — cloud torrent services keep a cache of popular files on hand, so if ten users want the latest Linux .iso the provider doesn’t download it ten times and eat up bandwidth. You can access your torrents on all your devices thanks to cloud storage, and if you pick smart from our list of best cloud storage providers, you can transfer your files without getting anywhere near your hard drive.

This way you can be sure that no illegal data ever touched your computer, even when downloading torrents that are sometimes of unpredictable origins. Cloud torrenting seems like a fast, intuitive and secure future of torrenting.