Alternatively if price is an issue (NEVER use a “free” VPN) you could torrent over I2P, which is free and very safe (at least as safe as tor, if not moreso).

Also the next release of qbittorrent is about to have built in I2P support (but also standard I2P comes with its own torrenting software).

I’ve always seen this as a question of risk. What you’re asking is the digital equivalent to “Do I really need to wear my seatbelt when driving?”

You can drive around your car two hours a day, every day, without a seatbelt, and be fine for years. You can say you live in a calm neighborhood and say no one ever drives recklessly there. Everyone is still going to tell you to always wear your seatbelt.

You can be very careful about what you torrent. You could possibly torrent lots of things with no problems at all. All it takes is one person at one other endpoint grabbing your IP from one torrent and reporting, to cause a lot of problems.

It’s up to you if you want to take that risk, but when you’re asking for advice no one is ever going to tell you that you don’t need one, and if they are they’re probably giving bad advice. There are enough horror stories that many don’t think it’s worth the risk.

I’ve been torrenting in the US for a decade and a half without a VPN, including as a kid on my parents network LOL, and only got warnings, maybe once every couple years. Tons of copyrighted materials. ATT then Charter, YMMV.

I was brought up thinking I live in a central europe. The “heart of europe” they called it. Only once I realized that I torrent without a VPN without consequences, I accepted the fact that I’m eastern european AF.

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Pedantically, it’s not required, but it’s probably a good idea to make your life easier.

In the UK, torrent sites are blocked by the ISPs, so you would need a VPN to access the sites.

I think it depends on the country. In the US, ISPs tend to be fairly strict so using a VPN is necessary (at least with Comcast). After 6-7 DMCAs, I’ve heard of people getting their accounts and service terminated. Best to use one and not take the chance with them. With 3rd world countries, most ISPs don’t care about DMCAs so I can see there not being a need to use one in those situations.

My country only sees an issue if I’m producing and sitributing pirated content and is really behind on digital laws, and mostly they dont give a fuck. In universities they encourage you to pirate books even show you how, especially with scientific papers and stuff, back when playstation games where only physical there where whole stores dedicated to selling pirated games. Latin america I guess. But on top of that VPNs are freaking expensive. Depends on your situation thou

I live in India and here nobody cares what you do or download. I only use a VPN to access blocked sites.

You don’t technically need a VPN for torrenting, but unless you live in a country that is known to not care about piracy, then you should use one.

yes. sorry. it’s cheaper then buying countless games and software, whatever you use it for. think of it as getting a massive discount on things you’d have been forced to buy otherwise. overtime, you’d spend thousands of dollars in games, etc. VPN monthly cost is a small price to pay comparibly

In France it is not very necessary, the hadopi will send you warnings. You need to stop at least 6 month after you receive a mail warning.

Then you are good to go.

I use stremio for ages without any problems.

Still i recommend vpn usage for torrents. You can share accounts with multiple persons to lower the price.

VPN that I use is about 50USD for a two year cycle, pretty cheap if you commit for a while. Even beyond torrents just not letting your ISP scoop up all your browsing data is worth the price.

For a private tracker no, for public trackers it depends on your country. Some countries the worst you might get is an email or letter in the mail, other countries you will be sued. I even use a VPN for private trackers, let alone public trackers.

I would recommend using a VPN.