There is a lot of concern about the likes of RIAA and Government Agencies harvesting the addresses
of individuals who use p2p clients to share and download.

People are starting to realise that their privacy is at stake when using these clients.
In fact, the internet is full of news about people being prosecuted and threatened with legal
action.

An individual usually learns that there is a problem when he or she is sent a threatening letter
via their internet service provider. It is usually in the form of a log, which is provided by
a bot client which collects their IP details and shows what they are downloading and sharing via their p2p client.

Up to now there has been little that can be done, but at long last individuals are coming up with software that can block these Spy Harvesters run by Governments, Media Groups and others.

Many media companies have IP harvester bots which pretend to be sharing stuff but in reality are looking for IP addresses which are downloading their copyrighted material.

It makes no difference whether you have a fixed IP or a dynamic one.
If you have a dynamic IP address that changes constantly you can still get caught out easily.
This is because, each ISP Provider has a range of IP addresses which belong to them.
It is easy for the likes of RIAA etc, to report a dynamic address to the respective ISP, who will have a log of the times you were on line and the allocated IP that you were using within their range. Armed with this information you can be located easily.


Special firewalls, which contain the details of the IP ranges of these bots and spies can be used to great affect. What the software does is stop these clients from connecting to your own p2p client and finding out what you are sharing or what you are downloading.

Remember :

These firewall software are still in beta testing phases, but should improve over time.... !!!

The 2 listed below are freeware and are fully operational.


SHAREWALL :
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sharewall is windows based anti-intrusion system for tcp/ip connection. Sharewall has the feature to update from the Internet with a current list of bad IP address that are know to be affiliated with companies trying to log into your machines And see what types of music you are sharing with P2P communities. Currently in beta stage, The author wanted to get this out as soon as possible due to the strong demand for an easily configurable firewall client for this type of use.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
features :
------------------------------------------
*client side firewall (tcp/ip)
*internet update of known bad ips
*p2p enimies
*spammers
*spyware
*add/delete custom addresses
*connection loggin
8compatible with (98/Me/2000/XP)
*low load usage
*user friendly interface
*free
--------------------------------------------

Read about:


http://www.iwantcode.com/modules.php...sharewall_home

Direct download:

http://www.iwantcode.com/modules.php...op=getit&lid=4



Here is another one:
(seems to be even better and more aggressive):

PeerGuardian 2
---------------------


Read about:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tim.leonard1/pg/index.htm

Direct Download;

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tim.leo...ian_v1.95b.zip

Latest list of Banned IP's eg RIAA etc:

http://www.simplyclick.org/uploadertest/pg2.asp


italiano

Thanks for the heads-up. Trying PeerGuardian 2 now :)

How does this affect broad band users with dynamic IP's?

I am afraid that even if you have a dynamic IP address that changes constantly
you can still get caught out easily.

This is because, each ISP Provider has a range of IP addresses which belong to them.

It is easy for the likes of RIAA etc, to report your dynamic address to your ISP, who will have a log
of the times you were on line and the allocated IP that you were using. They will find you
straight away, no problem :o

italiano

Fascinating stuff. I've been opening up my router for use with p2p to make things easy. Have a software firewall and it seems to block all scans that come from my local country (abuse.com) and from a range of countries from China to Germany. The firewall seems to block eveything, but this thread gives pause to take a closer look. How can we "sniff" these intrusions? I'm using Norton Personal Firewall Pro. It does an IP search and it is from that search I conclude that the firewall was successful in protecting my system--but not from IP identy, of course. What are we trying to protect? Identity or abuse?

Even if you have a firewall whether it be a hardware or software one, when you run a p2p client
people will be able to connect to you via your client. The p2p client acts a bit like a tunnel. Ok, they can't get access to your machine, but they will know about everything you are sharing and downloading. The only way to sniff them out is to keep the banned IP list up to date. In fact, the peer firewalls mentioned in my report both have screens which will show you if a banned IP address (the spy bot), tries connecting to you.

'identity or abuse??'...... sadly, probably both : :unsure:

What are these 2 proggies doing? Are they stopping the blocked url's from logging onto a p2p client to see what's in the shared file folder? I don't quite understand what is actually going on here.

Exactly right rikytik, if you know the IP's or IP ranges of the spy or harvester bots, then by blocking these IP's they can't log onto your p2p client, so in affect you are invisible to them.

In fact, you could enter these IP's addresses into any software or hardware firewall, but because there are literally, hundreds of thousands of hostile IP's, it would take forever...that why these 'peer firewalls' are so good. The important thing though, is to keep the IP list or database up to date...

The peer firewalls, will do this automatic updating themselves.

The following addresses have constant updates of banned/hostile IP's :


h**p://koti.mbnet.fi/zerodata/index.php

or

h**p://www.simplyclick.org/uploadertest/pg2.asp

Regards

italiano

With much thanks. That's helpful. Starting to understand. Very pertinent and important topic. Good post, Italiano.

Thanks for the information, Blueyonder is banning people from using P2P, so this would be useful. Cheers.