Workingman wrote:Oh dear, torrents are notorious places for scumware.... People think that they are getting free films or music or software, but they often get a whole lot more besides.
Actually not as bad as it could be with a little bit of knowledge and a large chunk of caution.
I use uTorrent to download my files and apps.
I use
isount as my main tracker and I close all the child windows it throws up before doing anything else.
I only download the torrent file. This can be done by clicking on the download torrent link or the torrent magnet link. It is always the same on every tracker site, they will try and get you to click the "faster download" button or the iLivid download button. Avoid like the plague as they are homes for malware.
Each tracker has a comments column for the files they host. Commenters will always comment if it's bad/broken/malware. I read the comments.
I use torrents mainly for movies which are out of production so you can't buy them, or getting the subtitled version of a DVD I bought which doesn't have them (mrs S needs subtitles now as she simply can't hear well enough for most films) and I also use it to get full working versions of programmes which I intend to buy but won't spend $49, 50 times, to get the right one. Literally I've had to go through dozens of some programmes which claim to have functionality they simply don't. I have no qualms about software copyright, any more than they have qualms about false claims.....
Oh and I have comprehensive on access anti virus scanning and a firewall which analyses the website "before" my browser gets to look at it and removes any known malware.