California computer science researchers have determined that “naive” P2P users who don’t rely on blocklists will inevitably end up connecting to “fake users” who may track their download behavior. Feeling lucky?

Now I don’t personally use these P2P networks, but I know lots of Geeks out there do. :)

I do know that RIAA won it’s lawsuit against a single mother last week who makes a somewhere between $30k and $40k per year. What did they get from her? Well apparently she is on the hook for a whopping $222,000! The RIAA has been looking for someone to make an example out of and I guess they found her.

Some of the information that did come out in the case was that companies do track P2P networks to see who is trading or making available their information. Does it matter if they find the materials on your computer? Apparently not, from what I can gather they are simply collecting TCP headers to prove which machines are making this content available.

This article references a study conducted at UC Riverside on some of the TCP header logs collected. The results are pretty frightening. If you think they don’t care about what you are doing and think they can’t track you, you are mistaken. Look at the example the RIAA decided to make of the single mother last week.

If you use any of these P2P networks this article and study are worth at least looking over.

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