[Nefarious]

Legal Disclaimer: This tutorial is not meant to promote illegal torrenting. It is intended for legal torrents such as the ones the Linux distro Backtrack uses.

What is a torrent file?
In laymen terms, a torrent is a file that includes instructions for a peer to peer download. You may be wondering what makes this different from downloading from a server. Well with a torrent you can have more then one peer and download much quicker. These people who help you by uploading the file to your machine are called seeders. Many people have given torrents a negative connotation because this is an easy way to distribute cracked programs or viruses. Personally though, I prefer a torrent and I'm always seeding for my fellow torrent supporters.

How do I torrent?
Well first you will need a torrenting program. The 2 most popular are uTorrent and BitTorrent. Personaly I use uTorrent, and I recomend it to you based on this poll. So once you have that installed then you need to find a ".torrent" file. So let's head over to backtrack-linux.org and click download. Choose the torrent and download it. This is what should of happened:

Spoiler:

Now we can run that 2 ways, double clicking it or opening it in our torrenting program. This is the process for uTorrent:

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Now whether you double clicked or added it you will see:

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Once you've finished filling out your options click "OK". Now you should see something like this:

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Now let's go through the row highlighted in blue. First we see the name you gave the torrent, and the size right next to it. Then we see the status of the download, this is given in a percent and goes to 100% (that should be obvious). Health has never been a problem for me, so I had to look around to find out what it was:
Next we see are down/up speeds. The "Down" speed is how fast your downloading and the "Up" speed is how fast your seeding. Now we come to the ETA, this is how long until the file is completely downloaded. Next we see the rating you have given. Not many people use this feature, but if you want to go ahead. Finally is the ratio of seeders to peers. Once completed your "Status" bar will say "Seeding". I highly recommend you seed. without seeders torrents could never survive.

Staying anonymous
Wait a minuet I thought you said this TUT was for legal purposes? Well it is, but if you look in the picture of me downloading the torrent you will see a bunch of IPs. These are the IP's of other peers and seeders. Most people have a problem advertising their IP, so here is a link to the VPN I use. Do not use Tor, reason:

Thank you for reading, if you have any questions then just ask.

[Demonic]

Nice tut.
But what's the reason to not use Tor?

[Nefarious]

Nice tut.
But what's the reason to not use Tor?

Leaked tutorial.
The reason wasn't listed, however I don't think TOR would do anything to help you not get caught torrenting unless all of your connections were routing through it, you would need to use WhoNix or something similar.

[Nil]

Most people recommend not to use TOR when downloading heavy stuff for the sake of the people who actually need TOR for their own safety. It's just selfish.

[Exiled]

Great explanation. This'll help many newbies, for sure. Thanks for the share.

[Flippy]

Great tutorial man, will definitely help out that people who have never torrented before.

[Ash]

Good tutorial, helped me out. You should create another on how to speed up torrenting.

[Feat]

Thanks since I've never really "known" how to torrent.