I've been downloading for years but I've never ever ever used BitTorrent. I've always plowed through the interweb just to find the direct downloads for random songs and videos while google had a million links to the torrents because... I don't know how to use/download torrents.

I remember my sister was a big fan of downloading torrents a few years ago but then our Road Runner internet service company called us and said that there was a trojan on her computer that was doing illegal stuff so I'm completely scared of downloading torrents. Plus my dad was like "NO MOAR DOWNROADING WITH BITTORRENT, IT'LL KILL YOUR COMPUTER AND OUR INTERNET PROVIDER WILL KILL US!"

So basically I want to ask:
How safe is it to download torrents (malware/virus/spyware wise)?
How do you download a torrent/what do you use/what are the steps?

I know it's kinda dumb to ask you guys about this when there are tutorials all over the web, but I honestly trust what you guys have to say waaaay more.

download bitcomet. install it then the next time you download a link it will ask you to open with bitcomet. it is still a p2p program except everyone does it own thing so bandwidth are minimized all around. save people money from server monthly fees and exceeding bandwidth limits.

yea, it's a p2p program and there's some programs that has a virus that's liek put in by liek them internet police, so once u open it your whole computer will die. all u need is a program liek bitcomet, or liekwise then u can start dl.

BitComet is not that great of a client but it is easy to start with. Downloading with BitTorrent is as safe as it is downloading with anything else - you have the burden of scanning the files first before you run it. However, the BitTorrent community is usually pretty good (unless you download illegal software then there is usually problems there). You can enable encryption and that will make it harder for ISP to detect your what you are doing (although it doesn't stop them or completely prevent them)

Some recommended BitTorrent clients:
uTorrent
Azureus - I use this.
...more here.

You will need to configure your anti-virus, firewall, and/or router to allow the program and/or ports. For router configuration, please refer to PortForward. Port configuration is probably the trickiest steps along with firewall configuration. You rarely have to configure your anti-virus these days but there are a few cases where you would have to otherwise it would cause your torrents to perform poorly.

You can go to public trackers (which normally does not enforce a ratio) and find torrents to download or you can join a private tracker (which normally does enforce ratio and has better quality ie less virus issue).

As for programs put in by "internet police" those are extreme cases and I believe illegal - normally they just log your activities and talk to your ISP. More popular torrents such as recent movies are probably monitored more closely. Most virus comes from ad-wares and spy-wares.

If you're going to start downloading bittorrents, use uTorrent.

I don't know how well Road Runner is with their p2p monitoring, but I'd be careful.

List of "Bad ISP". I believe these are the ones that will throttle BitTorrent. As for monitoring, any ISP could do it easily and it's pretty hard to find out till they are at your door with incriminating evidence

they can but they wont unless the you commited a crime or the fbi is after you. it is the whole privacy thing the end users have.

Well despite all this privacy issue, people still get in trouble for downloading copyrighted materials. It's doubtful that the ISP didn't play some part in it. I've had friends who were downloading movies (that happened to be just released or popular) and received e-mail notification from their ISP. How would they know if you are doing something wrong unless they are actually watching the incoming/outgoing traffic? Of course, it's not like they monitor every individual or look at every single activity.

Anyways here is a recent article on protecting yourself when using BitTorrents. Of course, the safest thing to do is to not use BitTorrent or don't use it to download copyrighted software.