Unless you’re taking measures to hide your personal identity when using torrent clients, you’re playing a dangerous game. Torrent clients don’t hide their users’ identities, so anyone can find out what you’re doing. There is a way you can achieve anonymity, however, by using a VPN or proxy.  These two common methods for protecting your personal identity have their own unique advantages and disadvantages. Let’s explore the different pros and cons of both methods.

Torrent Proxy

Of the two methods for staying anonymous, using a torrent proxy will definitely allow you to download torrents the most quickly. This is because the tunneled torrent connection is ‘uncapped’, with no restrictions on bandwidth usage. The choice of a server for such a connection is entirely up to you. As torrent proxies don’t use the stronger encryption methods of services such as VPNs, they allow broadband users to download torrents very quickly. If you’re not so well-acquainted with the ins and outs of torrent clients you may find the setup process a little tricky, however. This shouldn’t be much of a problem though, as you’ll find superb support for SOCKS5 proxies in the settings areas of torrent clients such as Deluge, BitTorrent, uTorrent, and Vuze. By just making a one-off change to your download settings, you can tunnel all future traffic through a secure torrent proxy. Proxies also offer security advantages over just using a VPN service, as they avoid disruptions in your internet connection from exposing your identiy. Using just a VPN could leave you vulnerable if it disconnects accidentally, which is why torrent proxies are popular as an additional layer of security for users of VPNs.

VPNs for Torrents

The most popular of the two options, using a VPN gives users the greatest level of anonymity. There are two reasons for this:

1. The use of a VPN server – often in another country - means that not only the torrent, but the internet connection as a whole is tunneled anonymously, which protects the user’s identity.
2. With the superior encryption methods used by VPNs, your online activity is safe from prying eyes. Attempts to spy on what you are downloading will be thwarted by this high level of encryption.

In addition to this, VPNs offer another advantage over torrent proxies: setting up a VPN tends to be very straightforward. Accessing the internet via the secure VPN can usually be done just by clicking on ‘connect’, which will start tunneling and encrypting your connection. For the less tech-savvy, using a VPN is likely to prove easier and more hassle-free. A minor downside is the slight downward pressure strong encryption methods put on download speeds. By using a high-speed, closely-located server and connecting with the UDP protocol, however, this effect can be avoided.

Summary

Remaining anonymous when using BitTorrent now requires you to take special measures. If you use torrents to download files, you need to think seriously about keeping your IP address hidden. If you don’t you may be subjected to bandwidth throttling from your ISP or, if you’re really unlucky, they could cut your connection altogether. With Faceless.me you can download torrents through a VPN connection. Faceless.me is totally anonymous and specially optimized for the use of torrents. Would you like 2 Gb of free data transmission each month? Then sign up for a free account now. Prefer unlimited data transfer? Faceless.me’s premium account offers unlimited data transmission, making it perfect for torrent users.