Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

im young enough to live with family

Tell your parents that they'll lose their internet if they don't give you $20 per year for VPN.

Nah, only the people you're tormenting will care, and what are they going to do about it? cry?

Edit: OP edited the title and ruined this joke

So here's the deal is you "really" can't afford $30 a YEAR:

I use a VPN called windscribe. You can buy this 1 year VPN for $30. You can buy it through the Google play store.

I also have the "Google Rewards" app that pays you in Google play store credit for taking short surveys or taking pictures of receipts.

I get $50 to $100 per year in play store credits to spend on Google play.

See where I'm going with this? I pay for my yearly subscription with my "free" play store credits I get.

=Free VPN. Like right now I've got almost $40 in play store credits (the free credits you earn have to be spent in a year. It spends the oldest credits first) and I have like 4 months left before I have to renew my VPN subscription. Since I never enjoyed any pay to win styles of games, at this point I practically run out of things I even want to buy with my credits before they start to expire. I've bought probably a thousand dollars worth of apps and games over the years and haven't ever spent a single cent of my own money on any of them. Nothing but the reward app credits. I buy the "pro" versions of apps I use to remove ads, even if the ads don't bother me or I don't use that particular app very much.

Jail probably not... however you will probably get a sternly worded letter from your ISP saying "We know you were torrenting (name of one show or movie you torrented"), This is your first warning.

In short, you won't go to jail, but your ISPs will usually give a few warnings, and then cut off your internet.

If you use only private trackers you can skip the VPN. If you use public ones, your ISP might take issue

yes it's important. take it from someone who is also young, but learned their lesson quickly

depending on what you you plan on downloading you can probably use direct downloads instead, and you won't need a VPN if I'm not mistaken. no idea if and how available things are, though

Just use ProtonVPN. They have a free tier. No credit card required. Its slightly slower speeds, but it will keep you from getting in trouble while sailing the high seas 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

OK, so what is a VPN?

A Virtual Private Network is a virtual network that lives on top of a physical network. In the case of the Internet, basically what happens is that your network traffic goes into the VPN on one side and comes out of the VPN provider's network somewhere else, rather than out of your ISP's network. All this really does is move any privacy concerns from your ISP to your VPN, which may or may not protect you from any legal inquiries.

For a more thorough explanation look here: https://www.howtogeek.com/133680/htg-explains-what-is-a-vpn/

Is it possible to use torrent without a VPN?

Certainly, however your torrent traffic will be visible to and inspectable by your ISP. If a copyright holder chooses to, they may sue your ISP for the personal information of the person whose IP address matches the illegal traffic that they found. After they have your personal information they can prosecute you directly. A VPN might shield against this by changing the apparent IP address associated with your torrent traffic, but then you are at the mercy of the VPN provider and the government of whichever country they operate in.

It should be noted that if you are not paying the bill for the Internet, and you use it for illegal activity, then the person you are putting at risk is the person who pays the bill. It's their name attached to the ISP records.

If you are caught, or if they just don't like torrent traffic on their network, the ISP may decide that you are simply too much trouble and it's not worth keeping you as a customer, and just cut off your service (for your whole house).

Yes, I ignored it for a while but then got walled off by charter until I acknowledged I’d fix the torrenting issue with my account. Got a von and never had a problem again

Like most things, it depends on your jurisdiction and the policies of your ISP. But as a general rule, yes, you should take steps to hide your IP.

Probably a good case example is to look at how many people in your area were sued for torrenting. For example, the rights holders to Dallas Buyer’s Club famously went nuclear on torrenters, so maybe start by searching that. Of course none of this is legal advice.

PIA is pretty reliable in my experience and their three year plan is quite affordable.