Protect Your P2P Privacy

BillGatesInABikini writes "APC Magazine has a short piece on protecting your privacy online while using P2P software with the likes of Peerguardian (Windows) and MoBlock (Linux). It's concise and to the point, and a real eye opener if you don't currently protect yourself while using P2P for transferring files, legitimate or otherwise."

It's a panacea

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you use these programs, your IP address will be exposed to others, if not directly than indirectly. It's simply part of how P2P works over TCP/IP.

:o\

[TubeSteak]

The scary part is, you don't know just how frequently and from the range of sources prying eyes come knocking until you use a piece of software designed to prevent exactly this sort of eavesdropping.

It isn't so scary if a lot of those "prying eyes come knocking" because they're running P2P also.

Just looking at the screenshot, why would you block 'the State of Wisconsin'? I suspect that those lists are just a big mashup of every corporate IP block ever, because a bigger list has to be more secure.

Safest Method?

[FreyarHunter]

The safest method of using P2P software is not to at all.

Seeing as how various law-groups continue to think they run the universe and thus have the right to destroy computers by "injecting" infected files onto the P2P network.. Egh.

Re::o\

[Sancho]

A bigger list is more secure. The fewer people you allow to talk to your machine, the less likely one of them will do something bad to it.

Interesting "fluff" article for the everyman.

[urbanriot]

If people think for one second that RIAA and MPAA are using their public blocks of IP ranges to bust people, they should think again. There's a false sense of security in running these programs - people continually see blocked IP range hits and think, "Look at all the bad people I've blocked." If you think you're being smart by using peerguardian or protowall, consider that these companies are smarter by using public and spoofed IP addresses. Not to mention, the majority of those the downloaded lists include massive amounts of "safe" peers that are being unnecessarily cut off.

Re:WTF -- Are the editors retarded?

[Darth_Burrito]

Third, using these tools as akin to admitting you are committing piracy because the only concievable utility is to attempt to hide from industry.

Ironically, the first thing that caught my eye about this article was the potential use of this software for spyware/malware protection in an organization. Eg, I think tools like spybot (free) and windows defender (free?) and adaware (not free for orgs) do not do this kind of ip blocking. Maybe I'm wrong? Anyways, the fact that it is open source makes it particularly attractive too because I don't think there are many good open source products in this area.

Of course, geered towards the anti-riaa crowd, I doubt this software would be all that great for anti-spyware in a corporate setting, but it was still my first thought.

Makes no sense

[rduke15]

Using P2P whith blocking blacklists makes absolutely no sense.

The point of P2P is sharing. So you are supposed to share, or eventually there is no P2P at all.

Yes, the blacklists are supposed to only block the "bad guys", and let you keep sharing with the "good guys". What an idiocy! Does anyone believe that people spying on P2P networks are SO stupid? It seems obvious that they will use plain DSL connections with dynamic IPs which are not on any blacklist, so you definitely won't block them.

An effective blacklist would block everyone, and if everyone used it, it would destroy the P2P network.

With a partial blacklist you can be pretty sure that you are NOT blocking the machines you would want to.

Look at the screenshot in the article. Yes, it was choosen carefully so that you can see Sony in there. The rest is mainly (European) Universities, and the like. Do you really think that RIAA sying on P2P would be from European universities?

Either use P2P and share, or don't use P2P.