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These are the dangers if you use a torrent client without a VPN

The use of torrent clients to download files is something that happens very regularly. However, torrenting is notorious as it is often associated with piracy of copyrighted movies, software, games, and other files. On the other hand, it should be noted that the use of torrents is legal, but it will depend on the specific download that we are doing. To a large extent it will depend on whether what we want to download is copyrighted or not. A good formula so that they do not control what we download and improve our privacy is using a VPN or virtual private network. In this article we will talk about the dangers if you use a torrent client without a VPN.

Dangers of downloading by P2P without VPN

When we use a Torrent client we connect to a P2P network that refers to a peer or peer network. In this aspect, its way of functioning consists of a network of computers that works without fixed clients or servers, and that share files as equals. Regarding some of the most used P2P programs to make torrent downloads, we have BitTorrent, uTorrent and qBittorrent among many others. When we download torrents from the Internet, basically what we do is enter into a P2P operation through the BitTorrent protocol. We find ourselves with a peer-to-peer file transfer protocol between teams, and which also works in a decentralized manner.

If we use a torrent client without a VPN, anyone interested can find out a lot about us thanks to our public IP. For example, we could know ours here. In addition, if we click on Geolocate IP we will obtain more information.

Here you can see the country, city and more, using a paid VPN we could even change them. Another important thing is that they would not know our ISP or Internet provider either. In this regard, using a VPN service we could download torrents hiding the public IP and improving privacy.

How ISPs deal with P2P downloads

Our ISP or Internet Service Provider, in case you didn’t know, can monitor our web activities using a method known as deep packet inspection. Thanks to this procedure, an ISP can know the type of traffic that comes from our computer. In that aspect, they can speed up or slow down and even if they want to completely block certain traffic. On the other hand, depending on the legislation of each country, if we download illegal torrents, our ISP could usually block or suspend our Internet connection.

In this regard, a torrent client without a VPN can be dangerous and harmful to our privacy. Therefore, with the use of a VPN, torrent traffic will be completely encrypted, your data is as if it were traveling in a tunnel away from prying eyes and our ISP will not be able to track the websites we visit or the downloads.

One important thing is that we could end up having legal problems. In Spain, litigation is rarely reached, especially if things are shared without profit. However, this situation could change in the future. As for the legal person responsible, it would be the owner of that Internet connection. Therefore, we must be attentive to how our connection is used and try not to use a torrent client without a VPN.

Are all VPNs valid to download torrents?

Then it’s time to consider using a VPN to download torrents. In case you don’t know, there are two types: free and paid. Would both work for us? The answer is no, because in the vast majority of cases the free ones will not offer us the speed we need. Therefore, we would have to resort to some paid and quality ones such as Surfshark VPN, PureVPN, HMA VPN, NordVPN or Cyberghost among others.

The main disadvantage of using a VPN is that the speed will be reduced compared to our contracted speed. This happens because we have to encrypt the connection and it will also depend on the capacity of the contracted VPN service. In the free ones, this negative aspect will be increased since; in addition, it must be taken into account that they do not always respect privacy.

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