Received a Copyright Infringement Letter

So I received a Copyright letter today for the first time for torrenting the new Johnny English movie, but upon seeing my past alerts I see there are quite a few, almost all of which are Sims 4. I've only ever downloaded Sims 4 from here at G4TW so like all others say, use a good VPN when torrenting and beware of honeypots like the Johnny English one I found. Not even 24 hours passed from me pressing download and it registers in the system, and then few days later I get the letter. I attached all the records tied to my account below just as proof. Nevermind I can't upload the same picture in 5 different formats to this forum apparently wow, even zipped says "invalid attachment name" despite being called "alerts", so I've just inserted it below.

"Johnny English strikes again"??    OK, that is a movie (and the movie industry in America always had a strong influence on politics), and trouble is to be expected by default if you download from your home internet, with a US IP-address. 

I would use a good VPN (NordVPN, Windscribe) from a more obscure location like Azerbaijan or Switzerland, to download that stuff.

One thing I didn't necessarily expect was that they were also monitoring these "follow-up patches" now, like 1.45.62.1020 or 1.46.18.1020. But good to know have clarity about. WE're still going to post direct download links in addition to the torrents/magnets, so that can be one alternative for users like you.

What's funny is that I have downloaded dozens of movies, even AAA games before and none of them are listed here let alone all the ****. I think that movie was some kind of honeypot set up because the response time it triggered was near instant.

The direct download links, are they considered safe and to not trigger the warnings? Also if I use a VPN (I am using ProtonVPN since I already have the email service) and use a torrent download because I like the ability to pause/slow down the download, would the torrent program (Deluge) compromise the VPN or need a specific set up?

PurpleNurple wrote:The direct download links, are they considered safe and to not trigger the warnings?

Yes.

PurpleNurple wrote:Also if I use a VPN (I am using ProtonVPN since I already have the email service) and use a torrent download because I like the ability to pause/slow down the download, would the torrent program (Deluge) compromise the VPN or need a specific set up?

No need usually to "set up" anything, other than connect to the VPN. You might want to check the settings for what is commonly called a "killswitch" (the exact name of the option varies normally from service to service). But what this means is that you have to change the settings such that in the event the VPN fails, it doesn't switch to your home internet. With the killswitch active, the internet connection stops, if the VPN fails. You could also achieve the same by tweaking some Windows settings, but VPN clients oftentimes by default provide a simple option in a menu for that. I'm not familiar with ProtonVPN yet, so you should look for the details yourself.

Also, after a quick Google search. You will need to go for a paid plan in ProtonVPN in order to use it for P2P (torrent-filesharing).

//EDIT

Just tried ProtonVPN (the free plan), and saw this. They have some sort of "double-kill switch", interesting:




The one under Settings -> VPN Kill Switch must be turned ON (by default it is off). 

The setting SecureCore achieves something similar in addition to the VPN server in one of the countries that you choose, traffic is routed through Proton's Swiss servers. So if the "foreign country" VPN-server fails, third-parties will see a Swiss IP address...and not your home internet. I suppose you can also turn that ON, though in my example screenshot I have it as off.

P.S the "DNS leak protection", while seemingly an option here, is always ON and can't be turned off (which is good). 

P.P.S would you also mind sharing with us, what your home internet provider is (for others to know)? But of course you don't like, you don't have to. Alternatively, feel free to vote anonymously in this poll.