Not Much Anonymity for Unprotected File-Sharers University of California, Riverside (09/25/07)
as it appeared in the September 26, 2007 edition of ACM TechNews.
University of California, Riverside researchers, in a paper titled "P2P: Is Big Brother Watching You?," show that about 15 percent of users on file-sharing networks are on the networks to look for illegal file-sharing for the recording industry or the government. "We found that a naive user has no chance of staying anonymous," says UCR graduate student Anirban Banerjee. "100 percent of the time, unprotected file-sharing was tracked by people there to look for copyright infringement." However, the research did show that "blocklist" software such as PeerGuardian, Bluetrack, and Trusty Files is fairly effective at creating anonymity, reducing the risk of being observed to about 1 percent. "Of course no one is suggesting that illegal downloading is a good idea," says UCR computer science professor Michalis Faloutsos. "But the P2P technology is here to stay and these industries would be better off trying to find ways to provide affordable and convenient alternatives that would allow computer users to download their products legally." UCR's paper was named "best paper" at the International Federation for Information Processing Networking 2007 conference. Click Here to View Full Article
