What is downloading?

What are steps I should take before downloading large torrent files?

• I'm a complete novice at downloading torrents so I have no idea what to do other than download the files through Bittorrent or whatever. I'm kind of hesitant to use Bittorrent or any other torrent program because my first experience with them gave me BSODs (or at least I think they were the reason). It was all good for probably about a week. So I want to get into downloading torrents again but what are some precautions I should take. Also, what are some other consequences from downloading torrents (other than high possibility of viruses).

• Answer:

  Here are a few things that answer your question: 1) Make sure that the torrent is legitimate. This is the main thing you should do. Avoid torrents with low numbers of seeds and leeches. Make sure you read the comments before using the torrent. Always scan the downloaded files using an antivirus program before using it. Note that some antivirus programs will show a "false positive", which means that it will THINK it's a virus or malware, when in fact it is not. 2) Consequences: If you are downloading films/games/software illegally, there is a small chance that that torrent is being tracked. What this means is that one of the "seeds" (a person uploading/sending the files to you) is tracking the torrent and will note down people who are downloading it. Usually, you will receive a letter to your house telling you to stop, if you're caught. Sometimes you get sent a fine (which you can fight against in court), but that's rare in places outside of the USA. If you want to protect yourself against any potential spies, organisations and bad peers, install PeerBlock and only use it when you are torrenting. http://www.peerblock.com/ 3) Configure your torrent client to improve your speed. If you are using uTorrent (the best BitTorrent client in my opinion) there are many settings that you can tweak to achieve slightly faster download speeds. There are many guides on the Internet that can help show you the tweaks, just search for them using a search engine. One thing I really do recommend strongly is to go to: 1. Options -> Preferences 2. Go to the "BitTorrent" section 3. On the Protocol Encryption, set the Outgoing to Forced. Some ISPs can check whether you are using P2P (i.e. torrents) and they slow down and limit your speed. This is called throttling. If you set the options I showed you above, it will encrypt your connection to help prevent the ISP from throttling your connection. Lastly, do not blame the BSOD on the torrent client, only on your selection of torrents. I have been using torrents for a long time, and I have never encountered a single virus or malware before. Hope this helps.