Now, first off a little disclaimer; This is not a completely fool proof system. I have been happily pirating for years and have never gotten a virus, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t happen at all. You should still always be careful and do a virus scan every day.

Disclaimer two; Piracy is illegal, and I am not telling you to pirate, but, if you do this guide will help keep you safe. Please, if you have the extra money support musicians, movie and TV studios. (Look at what happened to Scott Pilgrim -_-)

Now, after the jump, it’s time to get into it:

Torrenting – Your best bet here is uTorrent. It’s light weight, simple and has some really great extensions. One of which is the built in virus scanner.

Download it from utorrent.com or filehippo.com. After it’s installed go to the Apps tab on the left side bar.

The thing circled in red

Right there

Install Virus Guard.

Now, go hunt down a torrent you’d like to download. The Pirate Bay is your best bet, even if their servers are a bit twitchy.

When you search it pulls up the ones with the name closest to what you searched for but, that doesn’t always mean they’re healthy torrents. Go click on the little SE.

It’ll turn to the highest seeded files first, which is what you always want to look for. High seeds means that you have a very low chance of getting a virus or some form of malware from the torrent.

Now, not ALL torrents you’re looking for are going to have a lot of seeders, for those you’re going to want to read the comments. If they check out then it should be a safe bet that the torrent is healthy.

Add the torrent to uTorrent, and have fun. If you’re still unsure with it then right click on the torrent and select Scan for viruses.

There, you now know how to torrent safely.

Filed under: , , , ,