Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Torrents work by someone directly connecting to your computer, that's what happens when you download and seed a torrent after.

So the whole time you're doing anything with torrents, hundreds/thousands of other computers are connecting to yours to make that work.

Nobody is hacking your computer LMAO. It just lets them establish a connection to your computer to leech the file(s), nothing more

Bittorrent is a file sharing protocol, which isn't inherently dangerous. The 'torrent' contains the information that's being passed around to allow connectivity to that particular file. This is also not inherently dangerous as that information is very specific and limited... and doesn't allow any other user to browse the rest of your computer.

What may be dangerous is downloading a file that contains malware or viruses via a torrent. Use reputable sites and keep your security software up to date. Better yet, use a different computer for this activity with a vpn.

I worry that means that someone can connect to my computer directly.

That's how torrents work. Everytime you're downloading so.ething you're connecting to other people's computers and letting other people connect to yours.

the reason you were able to download it is because other people were seeding it. that's why seeding is helpful

They don't connect to your computer like you're thinking. There is a connection, yes, just like when you're downloading you connect to other people's computers. You can see them in the peer list.