Top tips on how to keep your identity safe from prying eyes and keep out unwanted visitors.
If you want to stay safe when downloading or sharing your favorite files online, the following tips wil help keep you from getting busted.
They’re simple, straightforward, and easy to follow, but if you have any questions ask them here in the forums.
1. Use Private BitTorrent tracker sites:
The first is fairly obvious and that is of the inherent risk of using public BitTorrent tracker sites instead of private members only ones. The risk stems from the fact that almost anybody can connect to the swarm and take a peek at your IP address.
2. Don’t act as a “Supernode:”
The RIAA has targeted subpoenas at users who allow their computers to be “Supernodes” on the FastTrack P2P System (used, for instance, by KaZaA or KaZaA Lite). In order to further reduce the risk of having your ISP subpoenaed or of being sued yourself, we recommend that you make sure your computer is not being used as a Supernode. To learn more about Supernodes and how to make sure your computer is not one, look here: Disabling the Supernode function with KaZaA (PDF 331k).
3. Try to use campus DC Hubs:
The RIAA and MPAA have sued college students for using publicly-accessible file sharing networks, including systems like i2hub. However, with one particularly notable exception, the RIAA and MPAA have not targeted users downloading or uploading music over closed, college campus intranets — in other words, students sharing with other students at the same school over the school’s own network. Tracking intranet infringements is practically more difficult, though not necessarily impossible.
4. Use IM data transfer programs:
Similarly, the RIAA and MPAA have not targeted file sharing through instant messaging systems, closed networks such as WASTE, and other sharing tools in which users can limit access by third-parties.
5. Use PeerGuardian:
This handy tool blocks “harmful” IP addresses from connecting to your PC. Using a list that’s regularly updated on Blocklist.org, it detects and closes connections from specified IP ranges.
6. Use Safe Peer:
This handy Azureus plugin for BitTorrent users is similar to PeerGuardian in that it also imports a list of IP addresses from Blocklist.org to use as an IP filter before connecting to peers.
What else can I do?
The Electonic Frontier Foundation(EFF) has posted a list of additional tips to help you avoid getting busted for illegal file-sharing.
First off, for those of you who are unware of what constitues illegal file-sharing, the crime occurs in the “dsitribution” of copyrighted material, the uploading or sharing of content, and not by simply downloading it.
The EFF points out that there is no way to know for sure as to exactly what the RIAA and MPAA are going to do or who they are going to sue but, in the meantime users of publicly-accessible P2P networks can take the following steps to reduce their chances of being targeted:
Either…
- Make sure there are no potentially infringing files in your shared folder. This would ordinarily mean that your shared folder contains only files 1) that are in the public domain, 2) for which you have permission to share, or 3) that are made available under pro-sharing licenses, such as the Creative Commons license or other open media licenses, and
- Remove all potentially misleading file names that might be confused with the name of an RIAA artist or song (e.g., “Usher” or “Madonna”) from your shared folder
Or…
- Disable the “sharing” or “uploading” features on your P2P application, if your application allows it (see below).
We hate this option — it blocks your non-infringing sharing, and it doesn’t get us any closer to a real solution that gets artists paid while making file sharing legal. But, at the moment, it does appear that turning off sharing will reduce your chances of becoming a lawsuit target.
This can usually be accomplished in the “Options” or “Preferences” of your P2P application by removing all shared directories and sometimes setting an explicit option not to share files or to allow zero uploads. The specific method will vary depending on your P2P application, but looking at a few examples can give you the general idea.
EFF suggests (but cannot guarantee) the following links for instructions (you can also try Google searches for (“turn off sharing”+the software’s name):
- University of Chicago’s resources: http://security.uchicago.edu/peer-to-peer/no_fileshare.shtml
- Duke University resources: http://www.oit.duke.edu/helpdesk/filesharing/steps.ht
**Note: Not all clients allow you to turn off “sharing.”
If you use software such as BitTorrent and eDonkey (as well as related clients like Azureus and eMule, respectively), you will automatically be uploading whatever you are currently downloading. In eDonkey, these files may appear in search results and thus become visible to the MPAA and RIAA. In BitTorrent, you must connect to a BitTorrent “tracker” to download a file, and your Internet address is visible to anyone else — including the MPAA or RIAA — connected to that tracker. In these instances, you may be at greater risk.
Related
- 13 students busted for file-sharing
- File-Sharing Students Say The Ads Made Them Do It
- File sharing has increased
- Net traffic shows file-sharing undented
- RazorPop Declares Victory in File-Sharing War
You could always use Shareaza with the security filters from the Shareaza Security Centre
thx1138
You forgot the most safe & most obvious. Encrypt your entire HD drives.. Free fast fun & secure.
You forgot the most safe & most obvious. Encrypt your entire HD drives.. Free fast fun & secure.
Use newsgroups and just leech. That is about as safe as it gets!
Got a question what if people will announce torrents always with the filename like knowppix-linux.ISO.torrent. People would know what the file really is from the description BUT nobody can prove that he thought he was downloading a genuine linux distribution ISO.
New comers and old pros alike should read this article!
A world that went a stray. My only fault was not getting into newsgroups at an earlier age. If your sharing anything your not anonymous your going to be seen and there really is no safe way to share. The only thing this article does is depict the way your ass gets handed to you. Not every bad IP will be blocked by peerguardian not every private site is truly private (Example Demonoid). If you really do love sharing just post to newsgroups and let the almighty users distribute among their networks/friends. Some private sites are better in security then others not keeping ratio data on their hosted servers but in another country together by only supplying trusted members or power users with invites keeping all doors locked and having no more then 40000 users listed rathern the 100000’s of thousands on some private sites. DC hubs can be busted even if its only in the network i seen it happen and posted on the net with college servers hogging bandwidth and the students get thrown out. And above all else DONT USE KAZAA or Shareaza or any gnutella client.. They were created before the lawsuits came and now days their obsolete in many ways.
Or…
* Disable the “sharing” or “uploading” features on your P2P application if your application allows it (see below).
does this not defeat the purpose of P2P?
This must be one of the most stupid “tips” collections i’ve ever seen.
I can’t believe i’m reading this on zeropaid.
The only really helpful “tip” is hidden in #4: Use closed networks you are on a campus and have bandwidth coming out of your back. Then learn how to use anonymizing darknets or encrypted vpn proxies.
After all you are on campus to learn aren’t you ?
The tip of using ip blocklists is only half helpful and only if you know how to handle them properly.
Every overzealous idiot is contributing ip ranges and the list providers don’t have the resources to check and recheck all the ranges on a regular basis. Therefore they are complete overkill and do more harm than good.
And the copyright goons know about them as well !!
If you HAVE to use public p2p (maybe you are looking for rare stuff) DISABLE VIEWING YOUR SHARED FILES ASAP !
If your client doesn’t support this change it or even the network.
The best tip in my opinion is STAY INFORMED AND LEARN TO USE YOUR TOOLS OF TRADE.
The times of brainless p2p fun are over.
I use Shareaza and it seems to work well for me…no cops knocking at my door yet. This was really helpful info so I shared it with everyone on http://www.ListAfterList.com. If you have any other helpful info on this subject or otherwise or anything to add to this list share it here. Check it out: http://www.listafterlist.com/ListAfterListcomListsAbout/tabid/57/ListID/7411/Default.aspx
by disabling uploading there will be no more files to download.so they will destroy us from within
lol disable ’sharing’ or ‘uplaoding’ features. that is what p2p is all about sharing.
For those of you concerned about being tracked you might be interested in reading about a new identity theft monitoring service called IdentityTruth.com.
A review of it is available on the Security Dreamer blog.
I’m working with Steve Hunt author of SecurityDreamer a site devoted to reviewing and analyzing physical and IT security.
You can read it here:
http://www.securitydreamer.com/2007/06/first_look_at_i.html
If im on a mac am i safer?
Private is safer than public file sharing.
So that means friend to friend services like Dargens.com should grow although it is only for new unsigned bands.
If you only connect to friends then only they know you are sharing. And you share with their friends friend’s of friends and friend’s of friend’s of friends and so on.
It is worth looking into anonymous networks such as Freenet: http://freenetproject.org/
I have been using Freenet for filesharing for a few years and it has really started to become a viable option recently. Freenet’s security is pretty good it has a dedicated team of developers including one paid full time coder. Its main focus is a censorship-resistant anonymous network and that makes it very good for filesharing too.
To give you some idea of speeds a full album of music can be downloaded in a couple of hours to a day depending on your connectivity and the popularity of the file. There are several uploaded every day and the number of uploads does seem to be increasing rapidly at the moment. Full DivX movies are also uploaded regularly.
Freenet is very easy to install and set up. It is a Java program but it is pretty light on CPU and memory.
It can run in a ‘darknet’ mode where you only connect directly to people you know and trust or ‘opennet’ mode where the program peers you with strangers at random. The darknet mode is most secure but as people will likely not know other Freenet users at the moment the opennet is more convenient. Your direct peers can’t tell for certain what you are doing on the network but there is a theoretical possibility of statistical attacks if an adversary can control enough of your peers. Opennet security should be provide good enough anonymity for 99% of uses.
Freenet comes with an anonymous filesharing program called Thaw and an anonymous message board called Frost which can be used to request files. It is definitely worth checking out and I think it is where the future lies with all the legal attacks on filesharers.
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now why would we care if artists get paid? don’t those pricks make enough as it is? the number of torrent/p2p downloaders could increase by 50% and those overpaid artists would still be overpaid.
here’s an idea: why doesnt somebody create a version of torrents/torrent programs that completely hides or encrypts the ip addresses of those in the swarm? i mean, im no networking whiz, but i think its entirely possible to hide an ip address from everyone… wouldnt matter if you did some super crazy scan on someone.. the ip address could be a totally legit one of course, but show up as all 0’s.
@mike
No you can’t hide the ip, other wise the download doesn’t know where to go, you can run a proxy type deal where the download routes though another ip though.
How does a system like Emule/edonkey rate in safety concerns compared to say U torrent compared to say limewire, say compared to overnet etc etc?
Here are some really great tips on not getting caught from anti-P2P ass-holes is to have these list of software : if you use Bittorrent use 6.0.3 version ONLY!! because it allows you to encrypt your out going IP address, Peer-guardian 2 (Block Anti-P2P, Ads, Government, Spy-ware, Trojan Sites) , Windows Washer to delete Tracking Cookies and Super Cookies from tracking your usage on your computer, Spyware Terminator because it is free and it protects in Real-Time from hackers and Unknown applications from accessing your computer without you knowing about it, and AVG because it deletes tracking Cookies on the fly when you connect to your web browser. For these list of software that i had mentioned to work correctly is for you to use these settings I mentioned in order for you to stay protected. And for much better protection (if you have the money is for you to buy a WIRED router.) Because a wired router is much harder to hack, it gives you a extra protection by putting a firewall between YOU and the INTERNET. Having a router enables you to set better firewall settings to Block certain protocols of your choice and another thing is it can be password protected!!.