(Jan 05, 2018, 22:52 pm)Sid Wrote: You have joined a thread asking about one thing to reply about completely unrelated things which sound scary; ...
I've no doubt that people will draw the appropriate conclusions.
Uh, sorry to crash the party with the hockey mask. I sometimes forget all kinds of people will read this, including scary or just not-expert ones, myself included.
Not to start lengthly discussions, but my reply isn't completely unrelated, it was about identification of clients.
May be just out of place to make fun and bring back oldies. For that I apologize.
And while you are right about educating people in a positive way, what in the world is "not to worry about"?
Internet is like crossing a street, we are just used to it and most of the time safe, just keep eyes open, ears up, phone into pocket.
I think people should go on their own conclusions; better if they search and think first. Then, to clarify my short understanding of the matter:
Disclaimer
I am no tech expert, nor record company-, governament agency-, activism group-, law office-, ISP- or anything- related, never was.
And in the last decade (probably more) I never heard of dangers in torrenting;
as far as I know, it is technically impossible to use the torrent network as means to seize or hurt it's users.
But still it is possible to:
- Track users who connect to torrent sites;
- Find out who is torrenting by their data shape / packet properties (addresses, frequencies, sizes, etc);
- Create a fake client (trojan) and offer it for us to download and use, or convince the developers of a good client to become bad, or hack their system or the authentic download sistes to put malware on us.
- Even worse, it is possible to seize, infiltrate or impersonate clients, sites and ISPs (VPNs too) in order to supress liberty, damage, or just pry on us.
- Scam, fish, hack and track your computer, even if not torrent-related.
Hope this helps people understand that torrenting is generally safe, but anything in the Internet isn't.
For me, I wouldn't mind anything in torrenting. I worry about my Android smartphone and my Windows laptop.