Plenty of people have unprotected sex. That doesn't stop a portion from getting AIDs. I can give you plenty of stories of people downloading a hot (monitored) torrent and then paying thousands of dollars in legal fees after ignoring the notice.

Get a VPN, or a Debrid service if you are strapped for cash. Why roll the dice when you don't have to?

Why would you want to rawdog the internet?

I mean, a VPN protects you from a lot more than just copyright trolls. Even if you're not sailing the high seas, it's better to have one than not.

I only use a vpn on public trackers, on private trackers I don't use a vpn.

But generally if you don't live in a third world country you should almost always use a vpn. I live in Germany and luckily my ISP doesn't care about torrenting.

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I torrented the vast majority of my growing 28tb library without a vpn over the last 7ish years.

This year alone, I've received 45 email notices from my ISP forwarding copyright claims to me. Neither the ISP nor any claimants have taken further action and the content in the claim(s) has always finished seeding and been removed from the torrent client by the time I've received the notice. (the notice specifies a particular torrent title/filename)

Despite not yet having legal issues or service interruptions; I have just recently decided to switch from torrenting to usenet via Frugal Usenet+NZBGeek (usenet provider+indexer). Better availability (In 2 days, I grabbed 2.8tb of content I hadn't been able to find via torrents and 15+ indexers), continuous 70+mbps downloads, and no need for a vpn while also not receiving anymore copyright claims for only about $6/month.

Those letters are often void threats. ISPs are not really the right plaintiff to bring priacy cases to court. The only thing they can do is to terminate service but that is obviously not in their interest.

Just if you are already paying for a VPN and the download/upload speed is acceptable, there is no point in getting yourself in trouble no matter how small the odd is.

VPN without a doubt.

I'd always use a VPN, you never know what could happen in the future. Better be safe than sorry!

Your ISP will terminate your service after enough letters. Use a VPN to stay safe.

The problem with this question is that it's a whole lot more nuanced than "Do I need it?". In short the only time you could possible benefit from one is if you use torrents, and even then it's really only public torrents. From there it depends on whether the swarm is monitored, and given how you simply can't know that it's safer to just assume that it is. But even if it is, will your ISP bother to forward the DMCA notices to you, and if they will, will they care if you take no action?

If you check enough boxes it's likely worth it "just in case", although at that point you might as well look into debrid services.

I once received a secure message from my isp after downloading a certain film. I've been pretty paranoid ever since.

Instead of spending money on a vpn and it might not work with port forwarding and me having to make sure my uptime is working I decided to spent the cash on a seedbox instead.
Any issue? Open a ticket with support and be done. No need to make yourself crazy why something is not working as it did 2min ago.

BUT it's more expensive than hosting a seedbox.

It's a minority.

I've been torrenting for almost 20 years and no one cares here where I live. I got VPN few months ago anyway, paying 5€/mo and I sleep better. The problem is I had to change provider already (Mullvad -> AirVPN). Its not easy to find proper VPN with port forwarding and Im afraid there will be even less providers in the future. Maybe I'm wrong, but feels like I'll have to ditch PF in near future.