computer question

[Stoble]

How safe are programs like Ares to use? Can people mess with your computer through this?

Same question for bit torrent?

[atm743]

i never used it before but for that kind of thing i would use soulseek

i use that and i NEVER get spam. it dosent even slow down the comp as much as thouse other programes like imesh and bareshare.

[Eagle]

I'm not familliar with ares, but I use Azureus for Bit Torrent. I get viruses, but Norton does a good job of blocking them.

[Jaan]

They can be dangerous, there are a lot of bored 12 year old punks out there.

I've used Bit Lord (Bit Torrent client) for the newer stuff and E-Mule (E-Donkey 2000 client) for the older stuff. The best thing to do is to go to a link site first. There are site which have verified links listed in them. There used to be a couple of GREAT sites but those were taken down under threat of lawsuits. There are still a few out there though.

You'll find everything you need to know here:

http://www.slyck.com/index.php

You'll probably never get a virus if you use one of these sites. The real danger is from R.I.A.A. and M.P.A.A. Those guys sue everyone, including dead people and little old ladies. Anyways, keep that in mind if you plan on using these networks for trading copyrighted materials in which you don't have permission to distribute. Slyck news will have some good articles that you should read first.

[3pac]

How safe are programs like Ares to use? Can people mess with your computer through this?

Same question for bit torrent?

Ares is only as safe as the client who uses it. Educate yourself about strange extentions such as .mp3.exe NEVER EVER download those. those are clearly viruses.

As for your question about bit torrent. it is quite safe. May i suggest you run a virus scanner 24/7 such as Avast or anything else that you may use. when you unrar a file usually there may be some hidden executable file or something of the such that may install a virus. As long as you have virus scanners running, you should be a okay.

[maxama10]

it appears to me that it has "legitamate adware" intergrated with it..... so id suggest not using it and find an adware free alternative... however i may be wrong i just took a glance at it.....
i use winmx and limewire for what i need and ive never gotten anything off of winmx and ive got several viruses from limewire but theyre all known and any decent antivirus can remove them automatically so....

[ArmySyko]

Two Programs

I use mIRC and BitTorrent and I have never been it by a virus. I am pretty good about looking at file names and making good educated choices to download. I'll never go back to using any other programs.

[Jaan]

I am pretty good about looking at file names and making good educated choices to download.

A lot of the best versions of large files don't make it obvious what they are to avoid prosecution, so they don't come up on a search. That's why verified link sites are good to use. For example, the release of a recent game by a group called "reloaded" is simply titled "rld-ds2a" for the first CD.

I don't see why anyone would download individual mp3's these days either. If you have broadband I have one word for you ... "discography" (c:

[steimway]

All of these file sharing programs you mentioned allow any person to look at your ip address. So if your computer is not secure, then that's a risk you take using this type of software that connects two computers over the internet.

[Stoble]

The reason I am asking is because I had just bought a computer about 3 weeks ago, and I installed both Ares and a bit torrent program called Azerus. I used them for about 4 days. I left to class and when I got back my hard drive was crashed or something. I tried recovery from hard disk and from cd's but nothing worked. When I took it back to the store they replaced it, but said that someone had gotten into my computer through these programs and my hardrive was trashed now. Is he right? I didn't know that was possible.

[Jaan]

The long and the short of it is these days you need:

- All Current Security Patches
- Good Firewall (Like Zone Alarm)
- Anti Spyware Program (AdAware, Spybot, Bazooka)
- Virus Protection (Norton, Avast)

I used to hook up modems for the cable company. Someone would have a brand new computer just taken out of the box, I would hook it up, they would open up Internet Explorer and bam, virus. You need to protect yourself.

[Cow hunter]

best for spyware removal from registry is JV16, thnk of it as spybot, adawarw skimming the surface of a pudddle and JV16 gets rid of the whole thng altogether if its good enough for the US gov't is good enough fer me

[BigEvil]

Stay away from ANYTHING that puts adware or spyware on your PC. I have a PC repair business on the side and the majority of my work is either Spyware/Adware removal and system recovery.

Sometimes it is worth actually purchasing (wink-wink) the better version of the file sharing software that is ad free.

[Jaan]

Sometimes it is worth actually purchasing (wink-wink) the better version of the file sharing software that is ad free.

Naaaahhhh. There are plenty of spyware free programs out there, and especially modded versions (I love those).

If you're talking about the client that works on the FastTrack network, then you might want to use one of these versions:

http://www.slyck.com/ft.php?page=2

Once again, this web site is a great place for P2P information.


"There's upholding the principle. And there's being the only knucklehead left who's upholding the principle."

Bram Cohen - Creator: Bit Torrent

[BigEvil]

Naaaahhhh.

http://www.slyck.com/ft.php?page=2

Score!