Maybe I'm just lucky with where I've lived, but I've literally never had problems pirating without obfuscating my traffic in any way whatsoever. I've been torrenting since I was a kid, too, and I torrent literally everything you can possibly torrent from software to music.

Do people really get hounded for piracy in other countries?

But you can check out fmhy.net, it's a great resource (unaffiliated, it's just a genuinely great resource for piracy :p)

Apparently this depends on where you live. It's pretty well known that in Germany, if you're found torrenting, you will at first receive an angry email from your ISP demanding you pay them €100-€1000. If you ignore this email, they will take you to court, and the judge will order you to pay the same fine plus their legal fees and the court fees. If you don't go to court, this will be directly debited from your bank account. If you don't have the money in your bank account, it will be garnished from your wages. This will happen, 100% of the time. Not even "someone hacked my wifi" is an excuse (even when true), because even if that was true, you would still be liable because it's your fault for not securing your wifi better.

Meanwhile in some other countries - even EU ones - nobody gives a shit and people can receive 10 copyright infringement notices a day and throw them all in the metaphorical trash.