Someone is complaing to my ISP

I have been using both Limewire and Acquisition on my Mac on the latest OSX since April. I have found Acquisition more stable and smaller. I like both programs, and get different things with both, strangely.

I have found Limewire often crashing and things need to be cleaned up or reinstalled for it to work. Acquisition has not been a problem, except maybe occasionally losing it's downloads in progress after resarting.

The problem I have had with Acquisition and not with any other such program PC or Mac is that I have received 'abuse' emails from my ISP. I haven't had Acquisition running much at all. I have received two emails at different times, not long after starting to use Acquisition.

These emails come from my ISP and state that they received a complaint alleging that my 'account has been involved in a copyright infringement'. then blah, blah, blah, about they will co-operate with any court order, blah blah. Then it gives details:

Excerpt from complaint:
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Site Details:
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Date Found: 12 Oct 2003 12:18:45 EDT (GMT -0400)
Network: Acquisition
IP Address: XXX.XX.XX.XX (My alleged IP at the time)
IP Port: 6346
Protocol: Gnutella
UserName:

Content being offered:
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Filename: (and here were some file names of programs only that were allegedly on my computer, no music files or aything else, just names of programs from different companies)


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My ISP has mellowed the email a bit, but lists my name, Alleged IP and Alleged MAC from the time. They listed 5 filenames the first time, and only a couple the second.

These don't concern me much, but I don't like drawing attention to my computer. I also mention again that it has only been Acquisition, which has only run a few hours on occasion.
Does anyone know about who is complaining?
Why Acquisition is a target?
How I can hide myself/IP?
Ideas??

Thanks

Al

 

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You can't

 

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Re: Re: Someone is complaing to my ISP

you can't under the current gnutella protocol. this is being worked on tho (but, it will be hard, i expect, to retrofit anonymity, at this stage - very major surgury).

is it possible they got somebody else's ip mixed up with yours (this has happened; ip addresses change)?

are the files they claim you were sharing present on your machine at the time of the alleged sharing?

 

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When I said you can't.. I meant it.

Isp has full access to all traffic you send/recieve via that pipe. I.E. if they wanted to, they can detect what you send/recieve. In fact, it looks like they did. You can encrypt your traffic, but if they really want to, they can even get to that data.

It is much easier to realize this, and then move on.

 

decrypting well encrypted info is extremely difficult, and many business, including isp's, all banks, all major governments rely on this fact in order to stay in business, run their operations (to say nothing of do business over the internet).

people in totalitarian countries would die if encryption was readily broken - this is why PGP is in the public domain, by the way, and easy to use.

for info on anonymous, encrypted p2p see

http://freenetproject.org/index.php?page=faq

(freenet isn't a substitute for gnutella however; searching it is hard)

 

Right, I totally agree. Decrypting blowfish level encryption would be inane at best, but it does happen. My point was that none of your actions can be hidden, albeit I did not mention that encryption could make it harder for it to happen.

This is something that needs to be implemented at the protocal level, so that it populates to multiple clients. I'd recommend requesting it at the limewire folk, or going through the acquisition or limewire code yourself if you know how.

One thing though, there is a hitch. This does make things go slower. Probably the whole reason it is not implemented right now, is the fact that it is going to make downloads slower, and any older client that does not use encryption, or older server, will still not provide you protection. These are all things that should be discussed in further detail, but I did find one thing on the limewire's site which would convince me that they would not want to slow their client down any further:

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Well I understand you can never completely hide, but to make it more difficult for the outside world to find you on here. I don't think it's my ISP lookin for me, someone out there is serching and targeting Acquisition to give people a hard time.

If is harder for them then it's gooder.

I cannot confirm if the alleged file names were on my hard drive at the time, it could be possible but........

No one else heard of this kinda thing? It's not like I have been a big user or anything, just kinda chekin it out.

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It would be very possible to add encryption to the protocal, but you need to contact the creators, or edit the protocal yourself.

 

Also, being that the complainant only had an IP and a file name that looks just like it might appear on Acquisition, indicates that they probably are searching for common program names on specifically the Acquisition network. This being a Mac only network, it seems interesting they are focusing this energy.

Any thoughts?


:bugeye:

 

Whoa, this is NOT a "a Mac only network."

Acquisition is a client (NOT the network) application to the gnutella network, and that has far, far more peecees than Macs "in" it.

 

I know it is on the Gnutella network which has all types of OS's. They have identified Acquisition in the email and my client seems to like Acquisition servers more.

Oh well, just looking for thoughts on the problem, and helping people hunt these things down.

 

Now someone should probably have a quick look over some STATE laws, since I know that Washington State has a site setup by their State Department where a person that gets SPAM in Washington State can send the "offending" email to a State appointed Attorney to have the state SUE the spammer.

The attorney then sends and e-mail to the list of servers that the e-mail bounced through to track down the culprit.

My guess is that the new legislation in the sorrowful states which have been forced by pop-singers wanting more money to overdose on cocaine and to help repay for hotels they bust up when they go cold turkey on tour.

Personally I won't get "busted" for downloading files from the net, and even if I was and they attempted I would just say "Bring it on" at the end of the day they will end up spending more money taking people to court plus what ever they were suppose to have lost in the first place than if they had let it be.

Most people will know now adays that if they want to play multiplayer games with people online, Then they will need a true registered copy of a game (And keygenerators will only go so far), other people will notice that MP3 music isn't CD quality since it's Vector based. If someone wants quality music they will go out and purchase it.

Anything I have ever had that wasn't purchased, I would not have purchased anyway, it was only "Opportunity" that has allowed me to try software and listen to some music.
If the music I listened too was still being produced then I would purchase it and the software I will purchase eventually when they iron all of their bugs out and get to a finalised version. (rather than bringing different versions out after only a few months)