Torrent safety
Is Popcorn Time safe?
No. Popcorn Time streamed pirated films and shows through BitTorrent, which shares your IP address with everyone in the swarm and uploads while you watch. Users have been sued, the best-known versions have shut down, and the name is a malware lure. Legal streaming services are the safe option.
What Popcorn Time was
Popcorn Time was an open-source app first released in March 2014 by developers in Buenos Aires. It looked like Netflix: a grid of film posters, a play button and subtitles. Behind the screen, it was a BitTorrent client. When you pressed play, it found torrents of the film on piracy indexes and downloaded them piece by piece, in order, so you could watch while it downloaded. Almost everything it offered was copyrighted material shared without permission.
Popcorn Time's history of shutdowns
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| March 2014 | The original app launched and was abandoned by its developers within weeks. Gizmodo reported it was shut down about a week after launch. |
| 2014 onward | Because the code was open source, other groups released forks under the same name. They weren't affiliated with the original team, and they appeared and disappeared on different domains. |
| August 2015 | The makers of the film The Cobbler sued 11 alleged Popcorn Time users in federal court in Oregon, seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000, PCWorld reported. |
| September 2015 | Millennium Films sued 16 more alleged users in Oregon over the film Survivor, after tracking their IP addresses and planning to subpoena their internet providers, according to Engadget. |
| January 2022 | The most popular remaining fork announced it was shutting down, citing falling interest. Its developers posted a Google Trends chart of searches declining since 2016. |
Why using Popcorn Time is a legal risk
Popcorn Time's developers argued they weren't responsible because the app hosted no content. That argument doesn't protect users. Two facts matter:
- You upload while you watch. BitTorrent clients share the pieces they've downloaded with other peers. In the EU, the Court of Justice ruled in 2021 (Mircom, C-597/19) that uploading pieces of a file through BitTorrent counts as making it available to the public, even if the pieces are unusable on their own.
- Your IP address is visible. Everyone in a swarm can see the IP addresses of the other peers. Rights holders' monitoring firms join swarms and record those addresses, then ask courts to make internet providers name the account holders. That's how the 2015 Oregon lawsuits identified users.
In the US, statutory damages for copyright infringement run from $750 to $30,000 per work, and up to $150,000 for willful infringement. In Germany, account holders receive formal warning letters (Abmahnungen) demanding payment. See is torrenting illegal? and copyright notices from your ISP.
A VPN hides your traffic from your internet provider and your home IP address from peers. It doesn't make streaming pirated films legal.
Malware risks of Popcorn Time clones
Since the well-known forks shut down, anyone can publish an app called Popcorn Time. There's no official source and no one to vouch for the code. Security researchers have documented several ways the name and the torrent model are used against people:
- Ransomware using the name. In December 2016, researchers at MalwareHunterTeam found ransomware calling itself Popcorn Time. Victims could pay or infect two other people to get a free key. Researchers said it was unrelated to the streaming app, but it shows how the name is used as a lure.
- Fake film files. Bitdefender documented a fake torrent of One Battle After Another in December 2025 that ran hidden PowerShell code from a subtitle file and installed the Agent Tesla trojan, and a fake Mission: Impossible torrent in May 2025 that installed the Lumma password stealer. Apps that pull torrents automatically from piracy indexes can fetch files like these.
- Unknown builds. An app that runs a torrent client and a media player with your user rights can do anything that you can do on your computer. Without a trusted developer, you have no way to know what else it does.
More in our guide to torrent malware.
Legal alternatives to Popcorn Time
If you liked Popcorn Time's free, poster-grid browsing, several legal services work much the same way. In the US, Tubi, Pluto TV and The Roku Channel are free with ads. Many public libraries give members free access to Kanopy or Hoopla. Paid services cover new releases. Which ones work depends on where you live; our legal free streaming sites page checks each one.
For films you can legally download, the Internet Archive and Public Domain Torrents offer public domain titles, and Blender Studio publishes its open short films. See legal torrent sources.
Questions people ask
Is Popcorn Time legal?
The software itself is a torrent client and player, but using it to stream copyrighted films without permission is infringement in most countries. Users in the US were sued in 2015.
Is Popcorn Time still working?
The original app was abandoned in 2014, and the most popular fork shut down in January 2022. Anything using the name now is from an unknown source. We don't link to any build.
Can you get caught using Popcorn Time?
Yes. It uses BitTorrent, so your IP address is visible to other peers, including monitoring firms. In 2015, film companies identified Popcorn Time users by IP address and sued them in Oregon.
Is Popcorn Time safe with a VPN?
A VPN hides your IP address from peers and your traffic from your internet provider. It doesn't make infringement legal and doesn't protect you from malware in an untrusted app or file.
What is a safe alternative to Popcorn Time?
Free, legal ad-supported services such as Tubi, Pluto TV and The Roku Channel in the US, or Kanopy and Hoopla through a library card.
Sources
- RIP Popcorn Time (Gizmodo, January 2022) (gizmodo.com) · read November 13, 2026
- Movie piracy app Popcorn Time shuts down (Engadget, January 2022) (engadget.com) · read November 13, 2026
- Popcorn Time users are now getting sued by the movie industry (PCWorld, August 2015) (pcworld.com) · read November 13, 2026
- Hollywood studios begin suing Popcorn Time users (Engadget, September 2015) (engadget.com) · read November 13, 2026
- Popcorn Time ransomware (Security Affairs, December 2016) (securityaffairs.com) · read November 13, 2026
- Fake Leonardo DiCaprio movie torrent drops Agent Tesla (Bitdefender Labs, December 2025) (bitdefender.com) · read November 13, 2026
- Fake Mission: Impossible torrent spreads Lumma Stealer (Bitdefender, May 2025) (bitdefender.com) · read November 13, 2026
- CJEU rules on copyright infringement in peer-to-peer networks case (Wiggin, on Mircom C-597/19) (wiggin.co.uk) · read November 13, 2026
- 17 U.S. Code § 504 (Cornell LII) (law.cornell.edu) · read November 13, 2026
- § 97a UrhG Abmahnung (Gesetze im Internet) (gesetze-im-internet.de) · read November 13, 2026