I fought the law and the LAW WON

[Jinx]

So, after six years of torrenting, I finally got a C&D from my currnet provider. It seems like as long as I stop torrenting under their company, they're willing to just leave it at a warning and call it good.

I was wondering if there's something I can do to make sure our internet/my computer is safe, though. Computer nerds, assemble!

[Shorty]

Relocated to Help Forum.

[Parker]

get a new provider

[Parker]

Alternatively look into getting a seedbox. They're fairly cheap a month. You can then download your perfectly legal copyright-free files from there using FTP or HTTP....so it doesn't show up as torrent traffic.

[Madame Adequate]

Well there is one failsafe solution... you may not like it though.

(SPOILER)You could stop breaking the law

Seriously though you can't be perfectly safe online, you can just be reasonably so. How reasonably so depends on what you want to spend, which ranges from "no money and a little safe" to "some money and somewhat safe" and that's about it unless you have contacts in either the computing industry or intelligence community.

[Pike]

Probably a virus scan and malware scan.

[Parker]

There's next to no reason to suggest you've been compromised?

[CimminyCricket]

You can run Malware-Bytes AntiMalware and AntiRootKit. I run them pretty regularly on my grandparents' computers just to make sure they aren't being ignorant. Both have free versions and premium versions, but I only have the premium trial installed when I need it. I think it is 14 days free trial, so I uninstall and reinstall every 14 days or so and run the scans.

if you're looking for a pretty sweet antivirus, I would look at webroot. it's cloud based and the full scans don't usually take longer than 4 minutes. Totally worth the 50$ for a years.

[Freya]

Here's the thing, they don't know really what you're torrenting unless they have some kind of yeah monitoring thing which is kinda illegal (LOOKING AT YOU NSA) They most likely just notice the data spikes at certain times coming from certain locations. If you're worried then yeah just stop. If you've been torrenting a lot, they probably notice the data usage. It kinda throws out red flags if you don't use much for your normal browsing then BAM over night it's huge, you should be sleeping, your normal patterns aren't like that.

It's interesting to say the least how they figure it out. Otherwise the only way is if there was some tagged tracker in a download you got and it was tracked some how. But I doubt it cause i've heard of them sending these things typically with data usage.

Just be careful and sparsely torrent if you continue to do so. They're watching your usage. Which is creepy but they have that right at least as a provider.

[Freya]

That's strange since hbo has been quoted by their CEO that they are okay with pirating and sharing hbogo passwords....

[Slothy]

Here's the thing, they don't know really what you're torrenting unless they have some kind of yeah monitoring thing which is kinda illegal (LOOKING AT YOU NSA) They most likely just notice the data spikes at certain times coming from certain locations. If you're worried then yeah just stop. If you've been torrenting a lot, they probably notice the data usage. It kinda throws out red flags if you don't use much for your normal browsing then BAM over night it's huge, you should be sleeping, your normal patterns aren't like that.

It's interesting to say the least how they figure it out. Otherwise the only way is if there was some tagged tracker in a download you got and it was tracked some how. But I doubt it cause i've heard of them sending these things typically with data usage.

Just be careful and sparsely torrent if you continue to do so. They're watching your usage. Which is creepy but they have that right at least as a provider.

Nice thing about having a bunch of Steam games and such, and just basically being me, is that my internet usage is pretty massive all the time. Hard to throw up red flags when there's nothing out of the ordinary.

[Psychotic]

Here's the thing, they don't know really what you're torrenting unless they have some kind of yeah monitoring thing which is kinda illegal (LOOKING AT YOU NSA) They most likely just notice the data spikes at certain times coming from certain locations. If you're worried then yeah just stop. If you've been torrenting a lot, they probably notice the data usage. It kinda throws out red flags if you don't use much for your normal browsing then BAM over night it's huge, you should be sleeping, your normal patterns aren't like that.

It's interesting to say the least how they figure it out. Otherwise the only way is if there was some tagged tracker in a download you got and it was tracked some how. But I doubt it cause i've heard of them sending these things typically with data usage.

Just be careful and sparsely torrent if you continue to do so. They're watching your usage. Which is creepy but they have that right at least as a provider.

Nice thing about having a bunch of Steam games and such, and just basically being me, is that my internet usage is pretty massive all the time. Hard to throw up red flags when there's nothing out of the ordinary.

Hard to throw up red flags? We'll see about that. I'm going to narc on you to your ISP.

[Slothy]

Keep in mind that I'm not above hunting you for sport if you do.

[Psychotic]

And here I thought the last three years had meant something to you too. It's at times like this when you learn who your real nemeses are.

[Jiro]

Well I guess I am fortunate like Vivi22 then; plenty of Steam downloads running all the time.