Torrents: security risk?

[Why Syzygy]

Excuse my ignorance about these things.

I know little about "sharing"; other than when someone installed a bunch of P2P sites, I got a lot of junk on my pc. Are torrents considered P2P? Some of the site names are 'thepiratebay.org', 'onlytorrents.com', 'nowtorrents.com', etc. Are some safer than others? What are the risks?

tia

[canetoad]

1. I'm an enthusiastic user of torrents

especially old Brit television series. Can honestly say I've never had a nasty arrive in a torrent download.

If you're starting, use sites like Pirate Bay or Demonoid, where you click the torrent and go to a page where comments are left. You will soon find out if there is any payload you don't expect.

From the available torrent clients, my preference is Bit Torrent. uTorrent is a copy of this but for some reason some torrent trackers actively refuse connections to uTorrent.

Usual risks apply. AntiMalwareBytes is handy to scan downloaded files. It may all seem a bit arcane at first but you will soon get used to how it works. BitTorrent has a handy scheduler for off-peak downloads too.

[Why Syzygy]

2. Can you explain

how they work? In the past I did manage to unpack one or two, but I had no idea what was happening? Am I to understand it downloads a link which when executed connects with another site for the 'movie' download? Thanks!

[canetoad]

3. OK, this is my understanding

in plain terms.

Someone with a file on their computer to share creates a .torrent file (bit torrent client programs can do this) which is a tiny (few kb) info file pointing to the file for share.

This torrent is uploaded - not the share file - to torrent tracker sites, ie Pirate Bay, Torrentz etc. I'm not real up on the correct terminology, but I guess it 'tracks' the torrent and shares the information about it.

So when you want to get a file, you search for the .torrent, download it and then start your torrent client program which by default handles only .torrent files.

Configuration of the torrent client is pretty easy. You point it to a place to save your downloaded files, just about everything else you can leave on default settings to get you started. When you open a torrent file you will see peers and seeds. Seeds have 100% of the file and are giving it out. Peers, like yourself, are downloading from the seeds and also exchanging bits between each other. You upload as you download.

It's pretty self-expanatory when you start a torrent then look in the various panels and see what is going on there. It takes a while for downloads to get up to speed. Your download speeds will be better if you upload as well, so you need to settle on a balance of uploads and downloads that works for you.

[canetoad]

4. and I forgot to say, lol

That when you search for a torrent, somewhere you will see what kind of file it is - .avi, .rar, .iso etc
so you may need an unpacker for the fill when you get it.

[Why Syzygy]

5. See.

I wasn't aware that I ever installed a "torrent client". All that stuff was lost when I formatted, and it's been awhile since I did it.

I'm going to risk it after taking a couple of precautions. We'll see.
Thanks for your help, CT.