I used to torrent on my work machine too lmao

I don’t pirate very often anymore, but when I do, I use whatever computer I happen to be on. I just turn on a VPN and bind the torrenting client to the VPN only. This is how I’ve torrented for years, since the late 2000s. I’ve gotten a couple strikes from my ISP several years ago, but that was before I had a commercial VPN. Otherwise, I’ve no issues.

What are the potential security upsides of doing it on a VM/container or a dedicated machine? I can imagine some performance upsides, but that’s about it.

I have a dedicated machine that torrents and seeds 24/7 but for some random thing I use my main pc

Security starts first with you. Most of the attacks are done though social engineering. Email phishing, dodgy webpage logins. Normal password security behaviour should fine for you to use the pc. More importantly, what is the distro you’re using? Maybe consider using Flatpaks for the apps, they tend to offer more restrictions on access to the system. (Installing the torrent app as a Flatpak and only give it permissions to a specific folder) One of things I tend to do is install chromium just to login on my Google apps, Gmail, YT. But I’m more of a non data sharing freak.

I don’t have a dedicated torrent machine. I sometimes use my phone. Sometimes my gaming PC. Sometimes my TV’s PC.

Yep, since I mostly pirate obscure games I don’t need to worry about the VPN. Lutris works great for fitgirl-repacks

I have a VM running as a seedbox with full time VPN on my synology NAS. I use that synology for lots of other stuff.

deleted by creator

I have a dedicated computer for torrents and I don’t sign into any accounts with it, I also block torrents on my router and bind my client to my VPN seems to work out okay

Yeah, although, now that you bring it up, I might want to put it in a vm.

Not really a problem with putting other stuff on it, apart from adhering to security standards. If you want to separate your personal stuff from hosted stuff, go ahead, but just because its torrent, doesnt make it much different.
Put it in a VM if you dont have a second machine i guess.

Device? All instances of torrent clients I use run in Kubernetes pods. I then access my Linux ISOs over NFS shares hooked up as PersistentVolume mounts

I use an optiplex for torrenting, Plex media server, and real debrid. The VPN is always on so I wouldn’t be concerned to use it as my daily driver but it’s a bit old to handle other tasks in use my daily driver for.

Depends on the devices I have on hand. Both my laptop and have my VPN, so I am able to get my LibreOffice windows downloads and ahem other things that I am not gonna talk about.

Currently I’m using a crypto VPS with gluetun for torrenting I swap VPN server every 3 days.

For security reasons I can’t tell you what’s the country I live in but my VPS it’s hosted in Russia.