BitTorrent

[wickedeyed]

Every now and then, I like to dabble in some parts of the underground world of cyberspace. :-X

Last night, while dabbling, I decided I wanted to download Quake 3 since the CD I had went corrupted and didn't want to restort to day longs queues of IRC or the evils of Kazaa when someone told me that there was a new concept called torrents.

I went ahead and tried it, the program can be found at http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/

I've personally never tried Kazaa myself but I'm told the concept is similiar.

But I was wondering if it was entirely safe. I know I had to give up some system resources but it was only for 2 hours. I need an expert opinion if this is in fact a safe alternative to Kazaa? ???

Ran Spybot, Ad-aware, NAV-- all came up clean.

I haven't installed it yet. Am waiting for an expert opinion before doing so. Kudos to the wise! ;D

[MikeBCda]

Hi,

I've never played at all with P2P systems, so this is almost certainly more instinctive than factual -- but I'm sure experienced users will be along with better answers.

If your program seems to be looking ok (admittedly before installing), I'd hazard a guess that your biggest risk is in the kinds of data that can be transmitted P2P rather than in the program itself.

[wickedeyed]

Yeah, I was concerned about leaving my ports open for other people to leech off my system resources. It is how it works, it downloads and uploads as well. What exactly is being uploaded? The file alone or other info that I want to keep private? Since this file gets passed through various computers, is it possible that the file could become infected through the process by an infected computer? :-\

My boyfriend said that the damage done by Kazaa to a network system on a computer is irrepairable. I find that very doubtful. Will BitTorrent do the same?

I know this is a lot of questions but as we all know, knowledge is power. ;D

Any takers?

[bigc73542]

some of the real nasty malware is transmitted through p2p programs ;)

[wickedeyed]

*bump*

any takers?