Safer Music & File Sharing
Many of our customers use file-sharing programs to obtain music, movies and software. Most of the popular P2P (peer-to-peer) file-sharing clients conceal significant risk from spyware and viruses. Although there are ethical questions over the issue of file sharing, not all file sharing is illegal.
Creating some awareness about safer file sharing is the main purpose of this article, while we leave it up to the reader to debate the pros and cons.
When it comes to music downloads, 40 to 60 million Americans have swapped music files over the Internet. Here in Canada we appear to be a safe haven for downloading music. Despite this, spyware and viruses don't play by the same rules and can infect anyone's system. Furthermore, your privacy is also being encroached upon by law enforcement, organizations and companies opposed to file sharing.
The first step is always to have an up-to-date antivirus program. A close second step is to have at least two good antispyware programs installed on your computer, such as Lavasoft AdAware, Spybot Search & Destroy, or Microsoft AntiSpyware.
Preventing intrusive probes into your system typically requires a firewall, however a standard firewall doesn't always work when it comes to P2P. In addition to using a good software firewall, a specialized type of firewall called an IP blocker can halt these probes into your computer. Two examples of this are ProtoWall and PeerGuardian. Make sure you run your IP blocker before you run your file sharing software.
There are many P2P programs to choose from, such as variants of BitTorrent, eMule, LimeWire, Morpheus, BearShare, and Kazaa among others. Most P2P programs unfortunately bring with them a large amount of spyware, which remains hidden and unknown to most users. It eventually brings their systems to a crawl, and by that time it is often a high cost in time or money to clean them out.
Before you download and start using one of these P2P programs, make sure you do enough research on them to determine whether or not they contain spyware. You can read their license agreements to see if they mention the collection of information by third party applications, but the language is often buried deep within overly long license agreements or hidden in confusing language.
A good place to start is a site called ZeroPaid. The have a good selection of many popular file sharing applications, as well as descriptions and reviews by members. Some spyware free P2P applications you might want to try are Kazaa Lite Resurrection (also known as K-Lite) or LimeWire.
The best way to prevent spyware or virus problems is to avoid this type of activity altogether. But if it is necessary, at least follow these steps to safer music and file sharing.
Creating some awareness about safer file sharing is the main purpose of this article, while we leave it up to the reader to debate the pros and cons.
When it comes to music downloads, 40 to 60 million Americans have swapped music files over the Internet. Here in Canada we appear to be a safe haven for downloading music. Despite this, spyware and viruses don't play by the same rules and can infect anyone's system. Furthermore, your privacy is also being encroached upon by law enforcement, organizations and companies opposed to file sharing.
The first step is always to have an up-to-date antivirus program. A close second step is to have at least two good antispyware programs installed on your computer, such as Lavasoft AdAware, Spybot Search & Destroy, or Microsoft AntiSpyware.
Preventing intrusive probes into your system typically requires a firewall, however a standard firewall doesn't always work when it comes to P2P. In addition to using a good software firewall, a specialized type of firewall called an IP blocker can halt these probes into your computer. Two examples of this are ProtoWall and PeerGuardian. Make sure you run your IP blocker before you run your file sharing software.
There are many P2P programs to choose from, such as variants of BitTorrent, eMule, LimeWire, Morpheus, BearShare, and Kazaa among others. Most P2P programs unfortunately bring with them a large amount of spyware, which remains hidden and unknown to most users. It eventually brings their systems to a crawl, and by that time it is often a high cost in time or money to clean them out.
Before you download and start using one of these P2P programs, make sure you do enough research on them to determine whether or not they contain spyware. You can read their license agreements to see if they mention the collection of information by third party applications, but the language is often buried deep within overly long license agreements or hidden in confusing language.
A good place to start is a site called ZeroPaid. The have a good selection of many popular file sharing applications, as well as descriptions and reviews by members. Some spyware free P2P applications you might want to try are Kazaa Lite Resurrection (also known as K-Lite) or LimeWire.
The best way to prevent spyware or virus problems is to avoid this type of activity altogether. But if it is necessary, at least follow these steps to safer music and file sharing.
posted by Peter at
4:40 PM
1 Comments:
Be careful where you get your downloads from. There's a version of PeerGuardian that contains spyware which has been released by Openwares.org. More on that here. I was first alerted to this by Red over at the Red Ferret Journal.
By
Peter, at 9:51 AM
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