There has been much debate over does P2P open up your system to malware and infections. Yes it does for several reasons which get very technical so let’s dive right in.
How does P2P work? You connect up to a server which your computer says “Hello there!” and the server replies back, “Hey, these are the current feeding hosts, xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx….etc”. Depending on what program you use there should see a tab labeled connections that will show you whom these feeders are. Now your computer knows to talk to those servers when you request a search.
So when you do a search for a song, movie, or document you will get a huge list of “Hits” back to you. Usually in a format like this:
Quality # Name Type Size Speed Bitrate
What most people are looking for:
- # – This shows how many people are sharing that file.
- Name – Filename
- Type – Type of file, MP3, MOV, AVI, MP4, DOC, OGG
- Size – How large is this file usually a # then KB, MB, or GB (ie: 14,256 KB)
- Speed – Feeders Data Speed: Cable, T1, T3, DSL, Modem
- Bitrate – If Music will show what it was sampled with, 128, 256 bits.
Because this is a peer to peer network, you have now become part of this as well, so whatever you download yourself becomes available to others to grab from you as well. The more feeders for that song the faster the download along with you knowing you’ll be able to get all of the song. From each feeder you are only getting part of the data. That is why the more feeders the faster you get the file, 10k, 10k there… so on. If someone drops offline no problem because someone will pick up the slack.
Now, this is where some people get into trouble. You must when downloading understand about your data. A average song is around 3 minutes long and about 3-5 MB in length (Many factors go into play but these numbers are close) and usually in the MP3, AVI, or MOV format. So you need to look at what your clicking on to see if it makes since. If your song is only 100k for the file-size and it is a 3 minute song for sure then something is WRONG. Same with Movies or Videos, A video may reach 50 to 80 megabytes (AVI or MOV), Movies 300+ megabytes (Into Gigabytes) (AVI or MOV).
So you now know that downloading something that doesn’t look right could bring you harm but there is still another and highly overlooked item. The program itself! Limewire and others are ad supported. Somewhere on your screen you will see a box that changes ads often. Many folks will argue with me if malware gets into your system from the ads however, I have come to my own conclusion that yes, by opening odd ports so that the servers can pass these ads to you allows your system to be widely available to have something interjected into it with out you knowing.
Today's Tek 