Currently, I’m using Mullvad and used Proton a few months ago. Surfshark did the job many years ago.

Just make sure you pair your torrent client and vpn so if the vpn goes offline, the torrent stops down/up loading.

I’ve been sailing for a good 20 years now. I run PIA VPN, which I know has concerns with their ownership, but that’s what I’ve always had and purchased before their sale, and have never had any issues. I have received 3 letters from ISPs in my life and all were when my VPN wasn’t running. No I have a kill switch in my workflow that will cut access with no VPN.

If you look into something like MEGA, all that data is http traffic. I’ve used that without a VPN a lot and have had no issues there, but that’s now my backup for when alternatives aren’t available.

VPN is almost for sure good enough, but there are other actions you can take if you want to take it further. Do a search for fmhy and follow some advice I there for detailed info.

+1 with mullvad. Haven’t heard of any issues with them. Had nothing to turn over to investigators multiple times.

You can pay them in cash if you want, so they’d have no PII on you other than your IP.

Keep in mind that each country has different piracy laws. Some don’t care much and fines won’t be pursued if you just ignore them, some poor countries don’t care at all, some don’t care about foreign content but take their own content and sports seriously, and some take all piracy seriously and hit you with tens of thousands of dollars of fines. I’d recommend looking into your local laws, and if you find out you’re in a danger zone, following the recommendations from your fellow countrypeople.

Even reputable no-logs VPNs aren’t foolproof, they can leak and the killswitch can fail. But Mullvad is currently the best, I heard their killswitch is better than Proton’s currently is.

Different methods carry different levels of risk. You’ll often hear that streaming from websites is safe since it’s not seeding (and exposing your IP address to the pool), but a lot of those sites do torrent from your browser these days (and can’t be bound to a VPN, I don’t think?). They’re also full of malware and malicious ads, so a good adblocker is necessary. The safest methods are private trackers (seeding but only to other private members) and debrid services (lowest risk but no seeding and they’re paid subscriptions. though there’s one that offers some seeding time at the highest subscription tiers). There’s also joining a trusted person’s private Jellyfin server (getting someone else to pirate for you).

Seeding is of course really important for preventing the entire system from collapsing and preventing niche or old media from being lost, so if you’re in a position to seed, you absolutely should. A good VPN bound to the torrent client (after enabling the killswitch and doing the leak tests) and the knowledge to ignore fines is enough for public trackers in many countries.

Note that even in countries where fines aren’t pursued if you just ignore them, they’ll still be sent out to your ISP and the person named on the internet bill. Your household may have their own thoughts about your viewing history, and some people are concerned about their government getting wind that they consume things like queer or non-English media.

Here’s the piracy community! You should do your research before getting started. lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/piracy

mull is a very decent VPN and that will do OK to anonymize your traffic, but that’s all you’re doing … you’re far from safe from all threats.

There’s malicious downloads, torrent hijacks, honeypots, bandwidth issues, the Number one thing you need to stay safe is COMMON SENSE …

So educate yourself and learn about this world you’re getting into. The information is out there and freely available.