Torrent P2P protection

Bcaddick

Can you guys give me some pointers regarding safe downloading of torrents?  I have been using Isohunt but notice there are often many red trackers that I believe I should be wary of...went to download Weeds season 4 and there was loads of them.  I have done some reading and people say you should install software that protects you from the red trackers to stop people snooping around your computer.  Any ideas please?  Please reply in fairly easy to understand computer language!

Stu_of_Kunming

Don't use torrents myself, I prefer HTTP downloads as I find them a lot safer, downloading the season finale of s7 of Weeds right now, it really is an awesome program.

MattD

I just make sure my anti virus software is always up to date (avast) and just go 4 it. Search torrent, go to site I trust most, hope for the best.

Haddock On A Stick

if you're going to use torrents, particularly for recent releases, make sure you use some kind of block list or peer guardian type protector. The block list is a list of ip addresses you download & that plugs in to the p2p software you are using (such as utorrent) and prevents your computer from "talking" to anyone on the list. The lists are of known copyright enforcers  - you can google for these lists or look under the help section of a website like isohunt. Peer Guardian is a separate piece of software that does basically the same thing. Otherwise, you can be tracked by your ip address by copyright enforcers who can take legal action against you. The other form of protection, other than anti-virus, is common sense. Look for positive ratings from other users & read some of the help sections on how to spot a fake - again, isohunt is pretty good for this.

blackheathaddick

I never download from the public trackers. Only use private trackers. What.cd for music and software and Goem.org for films and tv series.

tangoflash

Peer Guardian is no longer available as far as I'm aware and has been replaced with peer block. just make sure it's running when downloading and you should be fine.

http://www.peerblock.com/releases

I'd never do such a thing myself you understand................ ;-)

Leroy Ambrose

No torrent downloads are safe. None. Peerguardian and peerblock and all other technologies are useless as they only protect against 'known' riaa/mpaa addresses and those of the firms tracking torrenting for them. Private trackers are 'better' insomuchas they aren't easily monitored by the mothership, but the very fact that they are invite-only means that, when they do get infiltrated, you'll get utterly done by the Copyright Protection Industry that is the music/film business because you have no defence of ignorance. This is the same for the invite-only FTP sites.

As for security, if you really must download stuff illegally (and, let's face it, I'm pretty sure you're not talking about downloading freely-available scientific data for analysis or multiple Linux distributions for testing - still the only two things that I can see anyone needing to legitimately use a torrent for) then make sure Windows is legitimate (and patched) and your av software is up to date. Also make sure you patch third-party software (adobe is notorious for this) as its the attack vector of choice for the discerning russian ne'erdowells who serve up malware.