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First of all, I'd like to say that, being a stream/http user, I'm very much a stranger to torrent technology. Making the transition to using torrents, I'd like to ask how to search for certain/safe torrents for those of you who are familiar with it.
For example, I'm searching right now for a manga series called Ai Yori Aoshi. First of all, I've heard that torrent has had its fair share of cases of catching viruses; how would I go about using it safely? Second, I have no idea on even where to start to look for that particular manga series. Please help me out! Thanks for your time~
   
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how can you catch a virus if you're downloading video files?
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The file I want to download is a manga series. Are there significant differences to that? Sorry, I'm not very savy with these technical issues, so I honestly don't know if what I'm saying even makes any proper sense.
EDIT: ^_^ @ pwntrucci.
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Uhhhmm...the 2 sites I use are torrentz.com and isohunt.com. I think isohunt u would have a better chance of getting that series as I noticed when i searched for anime series, it also had some manga. sooo GL HF!
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the thing i like about utorrent it hat you can see what files your'e going to be downloading before you start. + Show Spoiler + so if you know the difference from a .avi or .exe file extension then you will be able to tell right away if it may or may not have a virus. i've never had any torrent have something in it that i didn't want, or didn't know what it was.
as far as search engines for torrents, i mainly use mininova, and btjunkie.
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Generally I just get my torrents at piratebay and read the comments. Usually if a torrent contains a virus someone will try to make a comment asap to warn others, so if it's a new torrent I'll wait a week or so before downloading. Doing a quick search there shows a few hits for Ai Yori Aoshi, however there are like 5-7 seeders and 20~ leechers on each file so it'll probably go pretty slow. However they all seem clean from what I skimmed through.
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Thanks so much for the helpful comments~ Searching through the different torrent engines right now.
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http://www.youtorrent.com/
It's a torrent search engine site (I forget how it works) but it produces high quality torrents. Basically, if it has more than 20-30+ seeders/leechers It's probably safe.
Bittorrent itself does not execute files; you can download viruses without actually opening them, I think. If you're really nervous, scan with an anti-virus program like AVG. <http://free.grisoft.com/> Freeware, and its highly rated.
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This isn't about torrent, but if can't find the manga, try mangatraders.com as they have a large database. Hope you find it.
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Just use a torrent site that includes comments, such as piratebay.org, or btjunkie.org (though this one is just a crawler and has a lot of private tracker/junk shit on it. I also use isohunt.com to search for torrents.
If you're downloading a movie/video file, a very common thing is for the package to have a .URL file in it. These are not real movies. When you open the file, it will say "go to www._____.com to get the codec to play this" and it's just a spyware infestation. Don't download those files. Even if it's just an .avi file it will occasionally be an empty movie with the same words. Don't do anything like what it tells you.
Also, the only way to check for viruses is to download the file and then run a virus check on it afterwards. Obviously, of course, if you're downloading a movie and the extension is .exe, don't do that.
Safest bet is just to look for comments.
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United States24612 Posts
IRC is a nice alternative if you are interested. A quick way to search for stuff might be to do a search at packetnews.com or debateroom.org iirc
BTW be especially careful on torrents since you have to download as well as upload. If you download from http/irc you are not typically breaking any laws (or they are less severe than uploading packets).
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