My gf got several letters and I started using a VPN. Easy peasy. No problems.
Now I've moved to seedboxes (seedhost.eu) and private trackers. First I buy an invite to a private tracker (if you spend like $20 you can get an invite to one of the less prestigious ones and like 500gb of quota). This is kind of a process since private trackers are 1000% against selling invites so it's kind of a "marketplace" forum type deal. Not a 1 min paypal transaction. Took me a couple days to get my first invite.
Then use that tracker on the seedbox which has a few tb disc. Then I sftp in (I have used the app Forklift for many years and highly recommend if you're on a Mac, it's amazing) and transfer down.
I get like 7 MB/s through VPN which is alright for me and even without a VPN, it's just random traffic coming from a server. You aren't torrenting from your machine so there's no issue.
To get quota on the trackers, you can either buy an invite that includes some quota or build it up yourself. The seedboxes I use have like 100 MB/s upload speed so you'd just download some super popular (freeleach if possible) torrents and then seed for a while. If your invite comes with some quota, likely you'll have more quota than you know what to do with. I bought an invite with a 100gb quota and now I have like 4tb of quota.
The downside is cost which might defeat the point of pricy for some. I pay like $6 a month for my instance. But if you're willing to pay for a more powerful instance you can run Plex directly and stream everything if you wanted. I download locally and put it on my local Plex server.
I use Syncthing with my Seedbox and use a VPN on my Debian VM running syncthing, then share the folder im syncing over smb on my local network. (I Use FeralHosting) This is just one of many ways to do it.
SFTP is fine but is like having a helmet on while racing but not using a seat belt.
Not really but I do notice that sometimes my ISP with throttle me and it stops when I use a VPN, so I just usually use a VPN (and never torrent local anymore, it's like waiting for a snail to deliver your amazon package).
Sure, there's a huge variety among private trackers. Googling "buy private tracker invite" shows 10s of different sellers. some tracker invites can be $150 because they're gigantic communities full of content and don't send out invites often. Some of them are cheap enough to throw in as freebies when you buy something else.
What's really nice about buying an invite is splurging the extra $10 and getting a built in 500-800GB of quota with it (really you're buying the account itself). Then you don't have to "work your way" up as long as you keep seeding whatever is popular.