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Find a torrent tracker website. There are a variety of websites that list torrents. Some are more reliable than others. There are two main types of torrent trackers: public trackers and private trackers.

Public trackers are available to anyone. These are the sites you will find when doing a web search for torrent trackers. Because of their public nature, many torrents are tracked by copyright holders, and downloading them can result in action from your internet service provider.

Private trackers require invites. These sites are not accessible until you have been invited by another member. They often have requirements, such as sharing an equal amount of what you download. Private trackers are much less likely to result in cease and desist letters from copyright holders.

Always get your torrent from a trusted source, ie. a website or a person that you know you can trust.

Install a torrent client. The BitTorrent protocol lets you exchange or distribute data over the Internet. There's no central server involved; data is downloaded from other users (seeders). You need a client application that will connect to the host and manage the download. There are multiple clients available for free online. Some of the more popular ones are:

Open the torrent file. The torrent file that you download from the tracker site is very small, usually only a few KB in size. This file does not contain the content that you are downloading. The file acts as a guide for downloading pieces of the file from other clients. Use the BitTorrent client you installed in the previous step to open the file.

Your torrent client should be configured to automatically open torrent files. If yours is not, you can drag the torrent file into the client window to add it to the download queue.

Set the download location. Depending on how your torrent client is configured, you may be asked where you want to download the content to when you open the torrent file. Select a location that you can remember.

Seed after you finish downloading. Once you finish downloading the content of a torrent file, you become a seeder. This means that you are uploading data to other clients connected to the tracker.

Seeding is what keeps a torrent community alive. Without seeders, no one can download the files. While it's not required, it is considered a courtesy to seed for some time after the download finishes.

Maintain a good ratio. If you are using a private community, you will most likely be expected to maintain a positive ratio with the community. This means that you will need to upload at least as much as you download.

Leave your torrent client running in the background. Most internet service plans have slower upload speeds than download speeds. This means that uploading to maintain your ratio can take significantly longer than downloading the equivalent amount. Leave your torrent program running in the background while you go about your daily tasks, and you'll see your upload totals skyrocket.