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NordVPN is one of just a few VPN providers that are suitable for torrenting. But, is NordVPN safe to use when uploading and downloading torrents? The short answer is yes, NordVPN is 100% safe for torrenting.
But, how can we be so sure? Is there any substantial proof that NordVPN is really safe for P2P file-sharing?
There are multiple choices of VPN for safe torrenting and they all claim to work reliably. However, there are just a small fraction of VPNs that have proven to be good and safe when you need to use them for torrenting.
NordVPN, obviously, has some competitors that also allow it to safely bypass the P2P throttling imposed by an ISP. Having said that, you might have already picked NordVPN as your favorite VPN service. The only thing that stops you from buying it, is you are not sure if it can keep you protected when you’re fetching a torrent file.
You must be especially careful when choosing the torrenting VPN provider if you want maximum security when downloading torrents.
Why torrenting can be unsafe?
We all love P2P file-sharing technology. It offers a lighting fast speed of download, a reliable way to share rare music, videos, or software products. More specifically, torrenting brings us a huge selection of files that we can download much faster compared to a standard download from the file server.
The ability to choose from a huge variety of files comes with a serious downside. Namely, there is much more freedom for hackers to spread their malware if they pack it into a file that you need to download. Not to mention, they might often utilize a brute-force and simply replace a legit executable file with one that contains just malware.
Another danger that you might least expect is legal consequences for sharing torrents. Many countries nowadays have established cybersecurity special police departments. In case you voluntarily or accidentally spread copyrighted materials, or, child pornography, you may quickly find yourself in trouble. This also includes spreading pirated software.
I strongly advise you against using torrents for any of mentioned illegal activities.
One more unsafe, or, rather inconvenient problem that comes with torrenting, is that your ISP could be throttling your torrent data speed, effectively taking away the biggest advantage of using torrenting.
Why is it safe to use torrenting with NordVPN?
NordVPN is a very good choice for torrenting. It offers more than 5000 servers in 60 countries. This alone is already enough to make sure you will have a safe experience when torrenting over a NordVPN. Throttling your torrent speed will be much harder for an ISP. Thanks to the fact that you will have a lot of choices of servers from NordVPN.
Speaking of servers. NordVPN is especially good for torrenting because it hosts a bunch of P2P-specific servers. When using a NordVPN desktop or mobile app, you can easily switch to a P2P mode and enjoy the fastest speeds and safe data transfer. You can either do it manually or automatically.
In case you are curious to know which NordVPN P2P servers are the best, you may want to scroll down to the last sections where I am sharing some tips on how you can choose the fastest server.
What makes NordVPN extra safe and secure for torrent downloads?
NordVPN is using military-grade AES-256 encryption. This protection algorithm is currently impossible to break.
No doubt, the CyberSec feature is the best protection against malicious threats when using torrents from unknown sources. Be advised, CyberSec works by blocking suspicious websites, so, you must have your NordVPN connection always on when browsing for new torrents.
How to stay safe from malicious torrents?
Using NordVPN alone is already a huge booster in torrent safety. Having said that, I have gathered a few important tips to help you stay even more protected.
Here are my 5 tips for safe torrenting:
- always do a background check on the new torrent tracker to make sure it is trusted (do some research, read reviews, and see if there are any complaints)
- choose the torrent wisely (take a look at reviews for a specific torrent file, and make sure it has enough seeders) to ensure its safety
- don’t ignore the advice to install a good anti-malware and anti-virus software (the one from Malwarebytes or ESET should be fine)
- try to avoid downloading .exe files as much as possible (those most frequently contain viruses and malware)
- use sandboxed environment or a VM to validate what you have just downloaded (if the rest of the tips bring doubts, but, you have no other choice but to download that torrent, do it first via sandboxed environment like Sandboxie, or, use a VM and download the torrent into it first) before allowing it to your system
How good NordVPN is for torrenting?
I hope, now it is clear that NordVPN can provide a safe torrenting experience.
Another question of importance is how well NordVPN works if you want to use it for torrenting on a daily basis.
To answer this question, let me first introduce you to a list of P2P servers currently offered by NordVPN. Below, you can see a screenshot of their website. There is just a small fraction of the entire list that could fit on this web page. They offer much more P2p servers.
Clearly, with that amount of torrenting-specific servers, you can already be sure that this VPN is really good for P2P.
Another important detail to find out is how good the speed of torrenting is when using NordVPN. Let’s have a look at my results below.
As you can see, the download speed may vary, depending on a specific torrent file. Having said that, even though I am downloading 3 torrents simultaneously, speeds are still quite good via NordVPN. You will generally be getting better speeds when using a VPN in case your Internet Service Provider is throttling your P2P traffic.
Does NordVPN work with uTorrent?
It is no secret that uTorrent remains the most popular GUI torrent client. Can it work with NordVPN? Obviously, it would be a pity if it couldn’t. I’ve decided to check it myself. Observe the screenshot below.
As you can see, NordVPN works perfectly with the uTorrent client.
Can NordVPN work with qBittorrent?
We all love open source. Why not use qBittorrent instead of regular torrent clients? It is free and has a community behind it. The code is written in C++ with Qt framework.
qBittorrent is getting more popular nowadays. However, it is not always clear whether NordVPN works with qBittorrent.
I took the liberty to test and verify whether it is true or false. See the results below.
It is enough to check the screenshot and realize that NordVPN allows for a smooth torrent data transfer when used with qBittorrent.
How do you choose the best NordVPN server for torrenting?
NordVPN is especially good for torrenting thanks to a selection of servers that specialize in P2P. But, how do you choose the best server?
Depending on how many seeders are available for a specific torrent file, you will get better speeds if you choose the server that is located close to the majority of your seeders. For instance, if you’re downloading a file that’s mostly available from seeders in the US, it is best to choose the US P2P server, even if you’re located in Europe.
You may want to manually choose the server, but, it’s way easier and better to allow NordVPN to pick the fastest server in your country of choice.
Now, the problem is, you mostly never know for sure if your seeders are concentrated in a specific county or not. Not to mention, they might be located in a very different time zone and have their PCs turned off. In that case, choosing the P2P server of a distant country may not be the best choice.
To make things easier, NordVPN offers automatic detection of the fastest servers that are close to you. Under equal conditions, those NordVPN P2P servers nearby would almost always offer the best performance.
Long story short, I recommend you allow NordVPN to connect to a P2P server automatically by choosing both country and server to be the “Fastest” in the NordVPN client app.
What are the fastest NordVPN servers for torrenting?
When writing this article, I was hoping to pick a list of the fastest NordVPN servers that work the best with P2P file-sharing. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that there can be no such list.
The thing is, depending on where you live, some servers might be faster for you but not for me. As we’ve already discussed you will generally have much better performance with those servers that are close to you.
If you live in a big country, such as the US, you will get lucky to have a bigger list of fast servers for torrenting. Thanks to NordVPN flexibility, that list will allow you to always quickly download your torrents.
