The use of a VPN protects you in two ways.

In practice, some people restrict their machine's uploading relatively or completely. In the collaborative spirit, the leecher (= 'leech', the one who downloads content) commits to become in turn a seeder (= 'sower', micro download server) and upload content to facilitate sharing to the greatest number. Torrent networks (like Kim Dotcom's famous Mega or Resilio) are also used to store personal or confidential data as a kind of collaborative cloud. Torrent networks are decried as a symbol of piracy when they just use a technology that decentralises and pools data storage. In other words, if 10 servers offer a 1MB/s download rate, the download will be as fast (if not faster) than downloading from a single fast 10MB/s server. The torrent client will search for the best servers (offering a better downstream speed) and start downloading from several servers. Depending on the torrent client (µTorrent, BitTorrent, eMule.) and the type of network (Torrent, Mule.), downloading a file starts with the detection of the servers storing the file.

Content on networks for torrenting is not by nature concentrated on a particular server (Amazon or Google cloud type), but disseminated on a constellation of machines (of individuals usually).

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