Limewire
I often get calls on a daily basis from all sorts of people who are having problems with viruses on their
computer. Some of these people have relatively minor infections and some having serious issues.
Here's the pattern I've noticed, When someone has a serious virus and/or spyware infection on their
pc, they almost always have a copy of Limewire installed as well. Now, don't interpret that the wrong
way. The Limewire software (assuming you get it from a legitimate source) is perfectly safe to use To
my knowledge,limewire software contains no spyware or viruses and I'm not just saying that to avoid a
lawsuit. I really mean it. So, if the question is posed to me "is it safe to install Limewire on my
computer?, my answer is Yes.

Most of the problems when useing limewire, it seems, is when people start using the service to
actually download files to their computer from limewire. This is where a lot of people get a bit
confused about why their computer gets so badly infected in a relatively short period of time. From
my observations as a working pc repair tech I have come to the conclusion that most people don't
have even a basic understanding of how file sharing services like limewire work,or (in a lot of cases)
do they care. That's too bad really, because it's difficult to protect yourself from threats if you don't
even know what those threats are or where they come from.The lure of "free" music is just too much
for many people, so they will just blindly download files from limewire and hope for the best.

Ok, now that I have that off my chest, I feel much better. The real purpose of this article though, is not
to persicute people for their wide eyed naive trust of free things they get from total strangers over the
internet, but to hopefully help educate those who want to use a file sharing service like limewire and
provide them with a little bit of knowledge so that they can better protect themselves.

The first thing I want to do before I go any further with this discussion on limewire is to let the folks at
Limewire off the hook. They are not responsible for their users' reckless online activities any more
than the people at Ford are responsible for their customers reckless driving. It's up to the end users
to monitor their own activities on limewire and to become part of the solution instead of being part of
the problem. It really wasn't my intention to single them out because most file sharing services are
essentially the same. The only reason I mentioned these guys by name is that they are far and away
the most popular service of this type operating today. Had I written this article a few years ago I
probably would have the Napster people annoyed with me. So for the remainder of this discussion I
will just refer to all of these services collectively as "file sharing services". Now all you lawyers can go
back to what you were doing before, such as sueing somebody (other than me).

Anyway, as I said before, most users of file sharing services may not completely understand how the
file sharing process works. There seems to be this perception that there is some gigantic free music
repository full of perfectly safe, virus free, downloadable content stored somewhere out there in
cyberspace. I assure you that this is not the case. ok, you ask, then where do the file sharing
services get all of this music that they offer for free downloads? I'm glad you asked. The answer is
that they don't. File sharing services don't store any music files or movies or anything of the sort on
their servers. More importantly, they don't own any distribution rights for any of the copyrighted
material. So where does the music come from? Again, thanks for asking. It comes directly from the
computers of other users of the file sharing services.

You see, file sharing services are in essence a very large peer-to-peer (P2P) network. When you join
one of these services, you are sharing a portion of your computer with other members of the service
and they are in turn sharing access to their files with you. Now, you may think that this is somewhat of
a security risk, but probably not a huge one, as these services upon installation of their software,
designate a default folder on your PC to share on the network. Other than that one folder, nobody
has access to your PC. The real threat with this type of network is in the files you download. If
someone in the network has infected files on their computer (trust me, a lot of them do) and then you
download one of these infected files, guess what!? You've just invited a virus onto your computer.
Multiply this scenario by the hundreds of thousands of other P2P members and the millions of files
being passed back and forth and you can see how this can quickly become a real threat to your PC.

So as a computer tech that deals with virus infested computers on a daily basis, I have to say that I
highly reccomend downloading your music from a "pay-per-track" service such as itunes or
amazon.com. I only say this because from a PC security standpoint, using P2P file sharing is just too
costly in the long run. Think of it this way, how many itunes could you have purchased with the $200
that you just gave to the computer repair guy after he cleaned up your PC? When you look at it that
way, all that "free" music just doesn't seem like such a great deal, huh?

Can i say this. Many people insist on using file sharing services even when they know the risks, so if
you are absolutely dead-set on using a file sharing service to build your music collection, at least get
some good antivirus and antispyware on your computer and make sure that your virus software is
always updated with the latest definitions. This will at least give you a fighting chance at keeping your
computer safe. Also, learn how to effectively use your antivirus software. Most antivirus software will
let you scan individual files in real time (after you download but before you open the file) by right
clicking the file and using the scan option in the menu. Other than that, all I can do is wish you the
best of luck and hope you know a good computer guy.

So again, if you ask me if it's safe to install Limewire file sharing software, the answer is yes. Is it safe
to actually use file sharing software? No, probably not.
Limewire and my computer,will it do harm?