are torrants safe to use for downloading books, movies, audio files, or anything? thanks daniel
It depends how clever you are. If you're a genius when it comes to all things computery, or you have an overinflated sense of your abilities in the same (like me), you can. I know a pirate who has downloaded heaps of books and movies in the past, and never really run into any virus-type problems. Most of his virus problems were encountered when he downloaded software (and not even Big Tech software - so-called "free" software!) Some of these (software-download related problems) he resolved by deleting everything, and restoring from back-ups. Make sure you back-up everything you wouldn't care to lose.
If you restrict your downloading to PDFs, EPUBs and movie files, you shouldn't run into virus problems, but I admit, this does depend on how dumbed-down your computer is. People who've set their computer up with default settings from Billy (where the computer basically tells the user what to do) are at much higher risk of viruses. Good torrent sites, like Thepira Tebay .org, give a nice little green skull-and-crossbones symbol for those torrents from trusted torrenters.
Remember, never download an executable file (i.e. software. Or zipped files containing executable files). And depending on your jurisdiction, always use a VPN. While some jurisdictions are pretty reasonable when it comes to so-called software "piracy", some jurisdictions will want to hang, draw and quarter the humble software pirate who simply wants to spare his fellow-man infertility and death by not funding Big Tech's special projects.