There is a lot of wrong and dangerous information on this thread.
Things started getting VERY serious in January, and there has already been landmark cases where an ISP was judged liable for its customers downloading illegal content. Do you think they are now going to sit back?!
Honestly - people need to appreciate the tide has changed and the media firms, ISP's and the courts ARE getting serious.
But, even basic steps can help.
As already mentioned, use Tor browser and NO ONE can detect what your looking at.
Use a DECENT paid for VPN and your safe.
I personally use PIA (Private Internet Access) VPN and it's configured to cut my broadband instantly on my laptop if the VPN crashes or fails.
There has been a test case that resulted in a successful prosecution from 8 packets of data shared I believe (memory is hazy).
That is almost not even enough to include the swarm data.
I would seriously SERIOUSLY recommend people bookmark and regularly read torrentfreak.com for ALL the news and court cases you won't read about elsewhere, and read back to Jan re the stance from Sky, Virgin etc.