This happened about a week ago, I got caught torrenting even though I was using the paid version of express vpn. How did this happen?
Are you positive the VPN was running for the entire download? Just takes a second to be exposed. And what do you mean by “caught”? More information will likely help find the answer.
Usually one of these gets you caught.
*1 Never have the torrent program start with Windows.
*2 Always have the VPN on before the torrent program
*3 Check ipleak.net to be sure your IP has changed.
*4 Always turn the torrent program off before the VPN.
Check the task manager to be sure it’s completely off.
What did you use for a vpn client? What do you use for a BitTorrent client?
I use qbittorent and in the settings I specify to only use the adapter associated with the vpn tunnel. If that connection goes down for any reason the app has no other route outbound. It just stops. If you don’t have this setup, the app is just going to use any connection it sees available to get out.
That’s likely all that will happen if you don’t let it happen too often. I’ve gotten the same emails. I can’t answer why that happened to you other than there had to be a breach of some kind.
It’s happened to me as well. Just my experience but their kill switch (at least on Linux) doesn’t work so well and I have the nastygram from my ISP to prove it 
Bind qbittorrent to your VPN interface - start the VPN and in qbit go to settings → advanced → and force qbit to use the VPN. You’ll need to restart qbit for the settings to take effect.
Run a test with https://www.doileak.com/classic.html
ProtonVPN for the win…
I was always very cautious when downloading torrents and made sure I was connected even before going to the pirating website I was using. Idk if I made a mistake once, but just feels super unlikely due to me being an overthinker and usually double-checking. And the email I got was a DMCA warning, and it just talked about how they found out I was torrenting.
Pretty sure it was the 2nd one that got me. damn.
I was using express VPN and qbittorent. But left the default settings as is. The only thing was enable kill switch on my VPN
I’ve pasted?..posted?..this story of mine to a few similar questions about torrenting and vpns. It’s entertaining and calming when people start freaking out because they’ve gotten a “nastygram” from their isp for downloading a game or something. I’ve gotten more than I care to admit and I’m still here. I also got a nastygram for downloading Barry Whites entire discography years back. As directed, I deleted the files promptly.
Funny story: A friend lived in a converted shed behind his parents house and had run a line from his parents router out to the shed. He DL’ed all kinds of shit all of the time without a vpn. This was at least 6 or 8 years ago. Mostly movies and music. Some of these movies were not exactly PG. One day his very straight-laced much older dad comes down and hands him a small stack of letters they got in the mail from Xfinity. As he handed them to my friend, his dad gave me an awkward sideways look and said “You might want to be more careful or your going to have to get your own internet down here” Closed the door and went back up to the main house where his mom and dad were watching TV. Each envelope had been opened. My friend took the letter out of the first one with a worried look on his face. It said something like “Copyrighted material was detected being downloaded from your IP. Copyrighted Material: Massive Facials #5” Next letter “Massive Facials #4” and so on. Needless to say, dinner was awkward that night. All my friend kept saying was “Of all the shit I’ve downloaded, Massive fucking facials had to be the one!” My ribs hurt from laughing so hard that night. Good times.
I don’t know how reliable the kill switch is on that app. I have FastestVPN and their client sucks. Even when enabling kill switch, when it dropped, it would allow traffic to go through. So I dumped that, use the OpenVPN client and specify Qb to go over that specific adapter only. Works really well.
You just made me laughed. Good story 
Paxh3at has “Tears flowing down his cheeks”…