Limewire

[Groupie]

Can i get a definite answer. Is this site as dangerous as people say because i know quite a lot of people who use is.
And even some computer mags are hesitant in the advice about it.

[Ethel]

Dangerous in two ways - the files you download are sat on somebody else's pc and could be infected with a virus, a trojan or a keylogger of some sort.

Secondly, you could be prosecuted if you share copyrighted material. One woman has just been ordered to pay a total of �16000 by the courts.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtm l?xml=/connected/2008/08/19/dlfile119.xml

Also, just because that piece of music says it is Spice Up Your World by The Spice Girls, that isn't necessarily what you get.

Computer magazines are hesitant because file sharing is not illegal. If you film yourself playing a bazooka and put it on limewire and I download it, no laws are broken.

It is file sharing copyrighted material that is illegal.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7240234.st m

[ChuckFickens]

Ethel has pretty much covered it..... it's safe ish if your very very careful about what you download!

though I'm very shocked at the choice of song for an example!!!

Spice Up Your World by The Spice Girls,???

Ethel, closet spice girls fan by any chance :)

[Ethel]

No, Chuck, but I imagine people who are too mean to actually pay for the music they love must listen to that sort of rubbish

I'm listening to Gogol Bordello at the monment. Great stuff

[ChuckFickens]

fair point :)

I use limewire how I feel it should be used... I hear an artist I like, I download a few tracks, if I like them all I buy the album and delete the tracks because a CD rip is better quality

if I don't like them I delete the tracks

and Gogol Bordello!!! shocking

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jbgC3qw_OlM

[Ethel]

It's a good tune though

:)

[Groupie]

Thank you Ethel and Chuck for your views.

But Bordello and the Spice Girls in the same sentence
Gotta be a first!!

[VHG]

groupie, you say is this "site" dangerous.

Well Limewire is NOT a web site, it is a computer program that runs on your PC.

When you search for a song what you are actually doing is searching for that song on thousands of computers all over the world.

The PCs it searches on are ordinairy PCs like yours and mine (by instaling limewire you are allowing it to do this)

It may find that song on a PC in the UK, in the USA, in Japan, in Brazil, in fact anywhere.

Once you start to download that song it is in fact copying it from the PC in Brazil or Japan on to YOUR computer.

Once you have that song on YOUR PC, then anyone else who searches for that song will find it on YOUR computer.

So that person (maybe in Russia) downloads it from YOUR computer to THEIR computer.

As Ethel points out, the problem is that not everyone can be trusted.

Somebody may put a file on their PC saying it is a song by Westlife (or Spice Girls), but it may not be a song at all.

It may be a computer program, and when you download that computer program to your PC it may run and install a virus on your PC.

So Limewaire CAN be dangerous becuse there are a lot of people out there who like nothing more than destroying other peoples PCs.

[VHG]

more...

One way these people trick you is to make a file look like a song, but it is in fact a computer program.

The last three letters of a file name define if it is a song or not. So if a file name ends in the leters "mp3" is is a song.

The problem is the last three letters also define if it is a computer program, letters like "exe" or "scr" or "dll".

So the file for a genuine song might be called "westlife.mp3"

Some people give songs long names like:

Flying in the air (from the album) by westlife.mp3

But some devious people "hide" the fact it is a program with a long title, like:

Great song by Spice Girls.mp3...............exe

So in the title above, there are the letters "mp3" but that is just part of the song title.

The important 3 letters are the last 3, and these are "exe" which is a program.

If you double clicked on file to "play" it (because you thought it was a song) it would in fact run a program which could do all sorts of the nasty things.

So that is the danger of using Limewire, you never know what you are going to get.

[andy-hughes]

My experience of Limewire has been good over about five years.

That said, I have only ever downloaded vintage singles, almost never a current track, and never an album.

I think using it is a calculated risk - you should be prepared for potential issues with viruses, but you should only ever connect to the Net at all if you have good virus protection, because if you are open at all to receiving viruses, and as a Net user, you are, then you should protect your PC with a good scan system.

I find AVG is excellent - reccomended by my PC supplier - and free off the Web. Had no troubles since they installed it for me - and they put it on all their new PC's.

[trish432]

I lent a computer to my grandaughter for a couple of weeks, it came back with viruses in the avg vault, all from limewire files. If you do download from limewire, right click the file, before you open it and scan with your antivirusprogramme.

[Groupie]

VHG This a first class answer
Well thank you once again to every one who answered, I think that the question has been comprehensively covered by the excellent readers of AB.
I think i gathered that extreme caution should be used and beware of copy right laws.
I think every thing has been answered but you never can tell.

Meanwhile back at the ranch.

[matty34]

Use a warez website; its like a forum, you may have to buy for an account for like, rapidshare or megashare. But, its 10x safer.

[pf429]

If you want to check for dodgy files on Limewire you can do it right there.
When you have a list of files right click on the one you think is best, this gives a dropdown window, go to "advanced"
click on "look up file with Bitzi" this will open a new site with details of the file, if the file has malware it wll give a warning. If it's ok it says so. some files it says it has no data for, I have found that these files are ok. when you're satisfied just close the page and download.
I've had no problems using this method so good luck