Argument: Free file-sharing sites often transmit viruses and ad-ware

Support

• Walter S. Mossberg Mailbox from The Wall Street Journal. “The Practical Case Against File Sharing”. October 20, 2005 – “These sites are major transmitters not only of viruses, but of spyware, which your antivirus program can’t stop. Even if your PC has a full, up-to-date security suite, with antispyware software, you are asking for trouble by downloading from “file swapping” sites. Many of the people I hear from who have had to take drastic, costly steps to save heavily infected PCs attribute their problems to the fact that their kids were frequenting file-sharing sites.”

Many peer-to-peer networks are under constant attack by people with a variety of motives.[1]

Examples include:

• Poisoning attacks (e.g. providing files whose contents are different from the description, aka “spoofing”)
• Polluting attacks (e.g. inserting “bad” chunks/packets into an otherwise valid file on the network)
• Defection attacks (users or software that make use of the network without contributing resources to it)
• Insertion of viruses to carried data (e.g. downloaded or carried files may be infected with viruses or other malware)
• Malware in the peer-to-peer network software itself (e.g. distributed software may contain spyware)
• Denial of service attacks (attacks that may make the network run very slowly or break completely)
• Filtering (network operators may attempt to prevent peer-to-peer network data from being carried)
• Identity attacks (e.g. tracking down the users of the network and harassing or legally attacking them)
• Spamming (e.g. sending unsolicited information across the network–not necessarily as a denial of service attack).