Ally Posted February 9, 2010 Report Share Posted February 9, 2010 I heard recently about a friend of a friend who got charged a few hundred quid for illegal file sharing in Shetland - Is this a common occurrence do you think? Not that I've got anything to worry about, officer... Also, on a quite unrelated topic, I recently installed Peer Block - software that stops third parties (spammers etc) accessing your PC. I notice an alarming number of connections when you use this software in conjunction with uTorrent for legal file-sharing (I perform, record and distribute my own 'nose-bleed-acid-skiffle', with an underground dance troupe from Luxembourg called "No More Herring for the Countess". That's my story and I'm sticking to it). Anyway, when doing this I find the number of connections trying to access my PC is mental - From Haliburton to the Ministry of Defence, various telecom services and obscure American companies. After the mild paranoia attack faded it occurred to me that, because of the nature of file-sharing, could these just be other PCs engaged in file-sharing themselves, perhaps by individual employees of the companies/departments mentioned? The attempts to access my PC stopped as soon as I closed the torrent software, so I assume I'm not personally under investigation by sinister government operatives... Any serious tech-heads care to enlighten me? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pooks Posted February 9, 2010 Report Share Posted February 9, 2010 The reason you are seeing so many people attempting to connect to your computer is because that is exactly what they are doing. You are also doing it to other people. The nature of torrents is that everybody shares the file that they are downloading. So while you are downloading from somebody else, somebody else is downloading from you. Make sense? Didn't realise there was such a following for 'No More Herring for the Countess' though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ally Posted February 9, 2010 Author Report Share Posted February 9, 2010 Cool, that's what I thought. It's just that when you see PCs on networks at the Department of Work and Pensions, The Police and the American Military it's easy to get paranoid. So I guess these are just employees in those organisations that are also sharing torrents? As you suggest, 'No More Herring For The Countess' clearly enjoy a far broader appeal than I'd first expected... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JordanKZ Posted February 9, 2010 Report Share Posted February 9, 2010 Torrents are basically on there way out anyway. With the rise of extremely cheap bandwidth, everyone is hopping on the rapidshare/megaupload sort of sites. Sure, if you want quick speeds you have to pay a monthly fee to use the service... Not that I'd know anything about file sharing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roachmill Posted February 9, 2010 Report Share Posted February 9, 2010 Not all connections are sweet and innocent. Bwah-ah-ahhh! There be companies seeding fake torrents (and placing them on file sharing networks) claiming to be the latest movies, albums and the like... only to track IP addresses that attempt to download them via their favourite client. That's where peer rating and recommendation come in - you want to be pretty sure you're getting what you expect. Then there's IRC traffic if your client supports "chatting". I'd always block that from the word go as I really wouldn't want some n'er-do-well l337-speaking at me. That's if I ever used these programs for nefarious means... which I don't Torrents on the way out?! Twaddle and piffle. There's too may reasons why that's Just Plain Wrong: distribution, redundancy, reliability, security, warm fuzzy feelings... I really could go on (and on) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DamnSaxon Posted February 10, 2010 Report Share Posted February 10, 2010 I rate Peer Block, it's surprising how much it keeps out - besides people you don't want "sharing" files with you, like the RIAA/MPAA. I do wonder though how many people at work are really sharing - most employers are understandably not enthusiastic about their employees doing that sort of thing on the firm's puters. I occasionally torrent stuff - mostly things people recommend to me that have been on telly recently, rather than Hollywood blockbusters (I'd probably pay to avoid most of those). Download, watch, delete, nobody would ever have made any money out of me for it anyway. Can't agree with KoF that it's going out of style. One interesting experiment, if you're using the list that includes Google, Yahoo, etc: Using (in my case) a Yahoo email account, log out of it, then close the browser and quickly switch Peer Block back to blocking HTTP. I can sit there for five minutes or more watching my PC trying to talk to Yahoo, and numerous Yahoo servers trying to talk to my PC. Remember, the browser is closed, the transaction is finished - yet there they are, all these blocked attempts at connection. It ain't the (closed) browser, so what exactly is going on in my bloated OS? It sure don't have my approval, as the actual user of my box. I don't care, you understand, I'll block it anyhow, but I still wonder what's trying to exchange what when I have closed the connection down. Viva Peer Block. I feel safer for having it there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JordanKZ Posted February 10, 2010 Report Share Posted February 10, 2010 ^ Well, it's important to remember that just because you don't have application open it doesn't have a background process or service! (*** Mod - no need to quote the entire previous post... ^ will do kthxbai ***) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roachmill Posted February 10, 2010 Report Share Posted February 10, 2010 ^Or that, when you close a program, just because it disappears from your screen doesn't mean it's finished unloading itself. IE and slightly older versions of Outlook were really *good* at this fun little party trick. Even Firefox has a go every once in a while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArabiaTerra Posted February 11, 2010 Report Share Posted February 11, 2010 One interesting experiment, if you're using the list that includes Google, Yahoo, etc: Using (in my case) a Yahoo email account, log out of it, then close the browser and quickly switch Peer Block back to blocking HTTP. I can sit there for five minutes or more watching my PC trying to talk to Yahoo, and numerous Yahoo servers trying to talk to my PC. Remember, the browser is closed, the transaction is finished - yet there they are, all these blocked attempts at connection. It ain't the (closed) browser, so what exactly is going on in my bloated OS? It sure don't have my approval, as the actual user of my box.Try a Ctrl->Alt->Delete to bring up the Task Manager after you shut down your browser. Yahoo may have some other programs running in the background. Also Yahoo may be loading some background programs when you fire up your computer. These can be turned off by firing up msconfig (Start->Run->type "msconfig" into the run box) then go to the startup tab and untick anything from Yahoo then restart your computer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roachmill Posted February 11, 2010 Report Share Posted February 11, 2010 ^Talking of Task Manager there's a great add-in for it called Prio. Besides adding many blooming-obvious-why-did-they-not-have-them-there-in-the-first-place features (e.g. telling you where a process or service actually exists on the disk) it adds a TCP tab (shown down the bottom of the linked page) showing all TCP and UDP connections and a multitude of stats about them. Very handy for seeing what's talking to who, where and how much bandwidth they're using. It's free for personal use too Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DamnSaxon Posted September 19, 2010 Report Share Posted September 19, 2010 Good News for Uploaders Bad News for Uploaders Both pretty much inevitable, really. Looks like torrents (etc) could be getting even bigger before long. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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