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Torrenting for the uninitiated

501 words·3 mins
Tech
Table of Contents
An easy to understand guide for torrenting.
Warning! I don’t condone online piracy of any form. Also, don’t come to me if you got yourself into trouble from torrenting. Torrent at your own risk.
How>

How #

First, you will need a torrenting client, I started out using Tranmission. Another favorite of mine is qBittorrent. This guide will be use Transmission as example.

After downloading your client, let’s say you want to torrent something totally legal like an Arch Linux ISO. First, you would need a magnet link of the ISO file. You can go to the official Arch Linux website and look for a magnet icon.

An image of Arch Linux magnet link
What the Arch Linux magnet link would look like.

Or if you are like me and would like to get your magnet link on sites like Piratebay, you can also head to Piratebay or similar site, search “Arch Linux”. Searching “piratebay” on Yandex will give the links to Piratebay. Right click on the magnet and hit “Copy Link” or “Copy Link Address”.

Copying Address of Magnet Link
Copying magnet link.

Open Transmission, click File, then open URL, if you already copied the link, the link will be pasted in. If not, just go ahead and copy the link in again.

Giving Back>

Giving Back #

The file you torrented came from some other people. And they seeded (shared) the file with you so you can have it. Always remember to seed after feed.

A good courtesy is to seed at least 1.0 ratio of what you torrented, that way you make sure at least 1 other person has it. If you are generous, do seed for more!

Nerd Stuff>

Nerd Stuff #

Torrenting is quite an interesting technology. Rather than downloading a file from a single source (e.g. website), you are getting the file from many other machines (i.e. seeders). And if there are more seeders, your download would generally be faster.

For anyone that’s not tech savvy and is not interested in the nerdy stuff. Just think of torrenting as downloading, and seed the torrent after downloading for others.

Risk>

Risk #

There are some risks from torrenting:

  1. If you are downloading copyrighted contents, you run the risk of getting DMCA letters.
  2. People can see your public IP address and could DDOS you.

You can get more details just by searching.

Minimizing Risk>

Minimizing Risk #

One of the most common ways is to use a VPN. And this is probably the only valid reason to have a VPN. You can use whatever VPN out there (do try to avoid the free ones tho).

If you want to use a paid one, you can use my Surfshark VPN link. If you use my link and stay with Surfshark for more than 1 month, you and I both get 1 month of free VPN. Yay!

Or you can just get any other VPNs out there. Just go on YouTube and you will find others shilling for them (even more shamelessly than me).

Background image by Compare Fibre on Unsplash

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