rentry.co/megathread is a good place for piracy tools.
Use an adblocker (preferably uBlock Origin on Firefox)
Use a password manager to make sure you don't use the same password on multiple websites, One leak could doom all your passwords.
Make use of temporary mail providers on sites you're creating an account once and are likely never visiting again.
For email encryption, use PGP.
VPN is perfectly fine; but know its purpose. It's purpose is to mask your location data; but is not required if your sole concern is piracy and your isp doesn't send notices for torrent downloads. Turning it on does not make you any more safer to malware, which is a common misconception