Furthermore, many ISPs seek to actively identify and throttle BitTorrent downloads, leading to slower torrenting speeds. These records can then be provided to third parties upon request. As long as you are connected to their network, your ISP can record your Internet activity and connect it to the name and address on your account. Your ISP is the company that connects you to the Internet and assigns your device its IP address. Second, while users can only tie torrenting activity to an IP address, your Internet service provider (ISP) can pair it to your true identity. This puts your privacy at risk because it is possible to see who is downloading and sharing which files. In fact, you can see the IP address of everyone in your torrent network - and everyone can see yours. The risks of using BitTorrentįirst, anyone you are sharing a file with can see your IP address (that is, the number assigned to all Internet-connected devices). This article explains those risks and what you can do to mitigate them.
While torrenting allows you to share large files, it does expose you to risks. BitTorrent is a specialized peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing protocol that reduces the impact of sharing large files on servers and networks.