Are direct download sites safer than torrenting and what can i do to make things as safe as possible without having to use something like a vpn? becasue there are a few movies and retro games im having a hard time finding so what can i do to be safe while trying to find the media i want?
Im not even sure if the pirates life is for me…
As an aside, it is technically possible to disable uploading/sharing when using torrents though it is generally frowned upon. There are also service such as debrid websites and torrent boxes that can download a torrent for you to then directly download over HTTPS from their servers.
Disabling uploading on a torrent application makes no difference. The moment you add a torrent to your client and start it, you connect to the swarm, and copyright trolls send letters to the ISPs of every IP they find on the swarm, so it doesn’t matter if you were or weren’t uploading at the time that they detected your IP.
Not to mention that some trackers and torrent clients ban or refuse to connect to clients that don’t upload.