The Best VPNs for BitTorrent | Tech News

What Is BitTorrent, Anyway?

BitTorrent has an unsavory reputation, one that is both unfair and well deserved. BitTorrent addresses the bottleneck created when too many people try to download the same files from a single source at the same time—be they bootlegged movies, hot music tracks, DRM-free books, or photos of cats. BitTorrent turns a file’s popularity into a benefit, instead of a bottleneck, by having each of the downloaders distribute pieces of the file to every other downloader. Best of all, it’s decentralized, with no main server that might choke under the burden of traffic. Torrenting is a clever solution; but while it can be used for legitimate purposes, its distributed, uncontrolled nature also makes it the ideal way to illegally share copyrighted content online.

BitTorrent’s dubious distinction as the pirate’s tool of choice has led to indiscriminate crackdowns from ISPs on the use of BitTorrent. With a virtual private network, or VPN, your traffic is encrypted and secured to ensure that no one can see what you’re up to—even when you’re torrenting. The catch is, not every VPN service allows BitTorrent on its servers.

Okay Then, What Is a VPN?

When you surf the web, your internet traffic isn’t necessarily secure. Someone could be lurking on the same network as you, monitoring your activities. That’s especially true when you’re using a public Wi-Fi network. Clever attackers can even create bogus Wi-Fi networks that impersonate legit ones, tricking you into connecting and exposing your personal information.

Your ISP also has remarkable insight into what you do online, and has even been given the green light to sell anonymized user metadata. Thanks, Congress! But with a VPN, they won’t be able to see what you’re up to. That will come in handy when we get back to talking about torrenting.

Other actions from Washington, namely the FCC decision to roll back net neutrality rules, have sparked an interest in VPNs. For those who are unaware, net neutrality is the idea that ISPs must treat all web content equally. Without it, ISPs could charge companies or consumers an extra fee to get faster connections. They could potentially create a system where consumers must sign up for specific plans to access web services like Netflix or Twitter. VPNs may restore net neutrality somewhat, but it will depend on how ISPs respond to the latest stint of deregulation.

VPNs work by routing your web traffic through an encrypted tunnel between your computer and a server operated by the VPN company. Anyone snooping on your activities, even if they are the ones running the network, won’t be able to see what you’re up to. Even the ISPs will be blind. Advertisers and others on the web will have a harder time tracking your movements because your true IP address is hidden behind that of the VPN server and your traffic is mixed in with everyone else on that server. It all boils down to this: You need a VPN.

Setting up a VPN used to be a painful process, requiring confidence and a fair amount of arcane networking knowledge. Thankfully, modern VPN companies offer handy apps that do the heavy lifting for you. All you need to do now is install and press the button to connect.

Using a VPN goes a long way to improving your personal security, but it’s not a bulletproof, magical solution. When it comes to security, we often say that it’s better to think of tools like VPNs as raising the effort required to successfully attack you. If someone is willing to invest the time and money in targeting you specifically, they will eventually get what they’re after. A VPN needs to be part of a layered approach to security and can’t take the place of critical tools, such as good antivirus software.

Everything Is Free Now

I often receive emails asking about the interplay between VPNs and BitTorrent. Some of them have included admissions of piracy, and even justifications for it. One reader bemoaned the difficulty in finding legal avenues for material that is out of print or just hard to obtain or not available for sale in a given locale. We sympathize. The state of the public domain has been woefully neglected, and market forces and regional distribution deals often keep worthy art and materials out of the hands of those who want it, even if they are willing to pay for it. But no matter how just the reasoning, the law (however problematic) is the law. ISPs and, yes, other web companies, are often compelled to answer when rights holders come with a list of offenses carried out on their data infrastructure.

If you are going to use BitTorrent for whatever reason, good luck to you. If you are going to use a VPN, more power to you. But be sure that you take the time to read the VPN’s terms of service before you start. And be aware of the local laws and possible penalties before you start, whatever your willingness to obey them. “I didn’t know the law,” or “I don’t agree with the law,” won’t hold up as defenses in a court, so make sure you can live with any potential punishments should you choose to do something legally dubious.

Will a VPN Hide My Torrenting From My ISP or the Police?

The short answer is that, yes, a VPN can shield your online activities from your ISP. And that’s a good thing, not only if you have legally iffy torrenting habits, but also because it protects your privacy in general. An online survey of 1,000 conducted by PCMag found that 25 percent of respondents named ISPs as the biggest threat to their online privacy. That’s entirely correct.

As we said, however: no security tool is bulletproof. On paper, a VPN should prevent your ISP from seeing your traffic as it flows across the web. It should also make it much, much harder for someone on the outside to identify particular traffic as yours.

That said, there are always exceptions. Time and time again, user error and efforts by law enforcement have undermined the protection offered by services like Tor or VPNs. Timing attacks, for example, can correlate packet traffic at a VPN server with activity on your own network.

In some cases, the problem may be the VPN itself. If the VPN company keeps copious logs about user activity (specifically, the identity of the user, which server they connected to, when) that information could potentially be obtained by law enforcement.

Can I Use BitTorrent on My VPN?

Most VPN services are completely fine with you using BitTorrent or P2P services while using their products. All of our top-rated VPN services do not prohibit file sharing.

Even the services that do allow torrenting often have restrictions. Some, for example, may require that you only use BitTorrent when connected to specific VPN servers. NordVPN labels the servers where torrenting is acceptable. TorGuard VPN, on the other hand, does not make any distinction about user traffic, so you can torrent to your heart’s content. Note that pretty much every VPN service that allows torrenting also explicitly forbids breaking copyright law, or otherwise abusing the service.

Some VPNs have tools that are particularly useful for torrenting. NordVPN is one of several companies that offer static IP addresses for purchase, which can desirable in some circumstances. TorGuard VPN has built its entire reputation around protecting torrenters. In addition to the usual VPN protection, TorGuard also offers static IP addresses and access to special high-bandwidth connections, for an additional fee.

See How We Test VPNs

What About Speeds?

When you use a VPN, your web traffic is usually traveling through more fiber and more machines. The practical upshot is that your connection speeds are affected by all that extra distance. For large torrents, this can mean a longer wait before you get the completed file.

A quick note about VPN testing: networks are finnicky things, and we don’t claim our work to be the be-all and end-all of VPN speed testing. Instead, this is a snapshot of how a particular service performed on a specific day. We also don’t think that speeds should be the only metric used to evaluate a VPN, but it’s clearly of concern to BitTorrent users.

In my latest round of testing, I compared speed test results with and without a VPN running. I used the Ookla speed test tool, and present the results below. Note that these are in order of score, with the top score in each category marked with italicized red text.

Right now, we consider TorGuard VPN the fastest VPN among those we’ve tested. It doesn’t win every test, but its low impact on downloads is especially important for BitTorrent users. Given its pro-torrenting stance, and collection of tools built with BitTorrent in mind, it’s easily the best choice for BitTorrent.

One way to avoid putting the squeeze on your downloads is to simply route them outside the VPN’s tunnel. PureVPN is also one of the very few VPNs to offer this feature.

If you’re more concerned about protecting your browser traffic than your downloads, you can install a VPN browser plug-in. This routes just your browser traffic through the VPN, and leaves everything else alone. IPVanish, KeepSolid VPN Unlimited, NordVPN, Private Internet Access, and TunnelBear, among others, offer browser plug-ins.

VPNs aren’t just for your Windows PC, either. There are Android VPNs, iPhone VPNs, and even Mac VPNs. Note that you’re less likely to want a VPN to protect your BitTorrent traffic over a mobile device.

VPN Reliability and Accessibility Issues

The extra stops and processes for your data and the distance introduced by VPNs can make a normal browsing experience somewhat hiccup-y. Suddenly losing connectivity while the VPN resets is mildly annoying in day-to-day life, but we could see how such interruptions could really slow down a large BitTorrent download.

If you plan on using a VPN while torrenting, consider the ramifications of the Kill Switch. This feature, found in most VPN services, prevents apps from sending data via the internet when the VPN is disconnected. The idea is that it prevents any information from being transmitted in the clear. The avid BitTorrent downloader needs to decide if they want total and complete protection, or would rather not have their download interrupted.

Also, not all websites like it when you connect via VPN. Although there are some VPNs that work with Netflix and Hulu, these and similar services outright block most VPN users. I’ve encountered many websites, apps, and services that simply don’t work right when a VPN is in use. This might impact when and how you decide to download via VPN.

Location, Location, Location

While VPN services have servers all over the world, each company’s headquarters do have to be based somewhere on the planet. And that somewhere might have data retention laws that require the VPN company to either collect and maintain user data for a set period of time.

Understanding what kind of information a VPN service collects, and how long it is maintained, can be hard to figure out. To get the answer, you may have to wade through unending FAQ pages and opaque terms of service written in arcane legalese. If the VPN company you’re considering can’t clearly explain what information it gathers and how long it will be kept, it’s probably not a great service.

When we review VPNs, we make a point to ask service representatives about what efforts they take to secure customers’ privacy. You can read through our full reviews to see their answers. So far, the majority of services have shown that they take protecting user privacy very seriously.

Note that national and international law as it relates to data storage and whether that data can be turned over to law enforcement is complicated and constantly changing. A good service today might choose or be compelled to alter its policies tomorrow, so pay attention to any updates to the terms of service.

VPN Performance

There are three important numbers to consider when choosing a VPN, aside from price. The first is the number of devices the VPN allows per subscription. On average, VPN services let you use up to five devices at a time. More than that, and you usually have to pay extra. If the VPN you’re looking at offers fewer than five devices (they might be called “simultaneous connections”), the service better offer something pretty nifty to balance out that restriction.

Second is the number of servers. Unless you purchase a VPN server yourself (which you can do!), you’ll have to share that server with other people using the VPN service. For each person added to the server, your slice of the bandwidth pie shrinks a bit. The more servers a company has on hand, the less likely you are to find yourself crowded in with a bunch of other downloaders. If you’re keen to have a VPN server to yourself, you can purchase static IP addresses from TorGuard VPN, or take advantage of KeepSolid VPN Unlimited’s Personal VPN Server offering. Or roll your own VPN with Outline.

The issue of bandwidth sharing is compounded when it comes to torrenting, because many VPNs only allow it on specific servers. That means a bunch of high-traffic activities are going to be happening on a small collection of servers. The more servers, the better the odds that there will be more torrent-friendly servers, too.

Last is the number of server locations. The more server locations there are, the more likely you are to find one nearby, and the nearer the server, the better your web performance tends to be. Having more server locations also gives you more options to spoof your location, if you’re into that kind of thing. That’s an especially important ability if you’re trying to access Netflix from a region other than the one for which you have subscribed.

A good VPN service offers more than 700 servers across the globe, with diverse server locations. A robust VPN service has more than 1,000 servers. The kings of the heap as far as servers go are NordVPN, Private Internet Access, and TorGuard VPN. These companies offer over 3,000 servers to subscribers, and have a good mix of locations to boot.

Encrypt Your Torrent Traffic

Perhaps you’ll decide that all this effort isn’t worth it just to secure your BitTorrent downloads. But even so, you should keep in mind that a VPN is still the best way to keep your internet traffic private and secure. Whether you decide to spring for a paid account, or dip your toe in with a free VPN, it’s about time you started living the encrypted lifestyle.