If you use bittorrents, eDonkey, WinMX, Gnutella, Limewire, or any other P2P network, then you are likely being scanned by investigators. In an effort to trap and prosecute people for abusing copyrighted movies and music, investigators often pose as P2P downloaders. While they themselves share and download copyrighted files, these "posers" also scan and log your IP (internet protocol) address. Your computer IP address then becomes ammunition for civil lawsuits, where you may be sued for copyright infringement.

These investigator "posers" are everywhere. Their efforts will sometimes result in wholesale lawsuits, where hundreds of downloaders are charged thousands of dollars in copyright fines. Investigating posers comprise up to 3% of all P2P downloaders you may be sharing files with.

In this war over digital freedoms, there are a couple of options for concealing your identity from these prying eyes.


Concealment Option 1: You can install an anonymizing proxy network service, like Anonymizer.com, The Cloak, or A4. There is even a special anonymizer dedicated to P2P networking: Mute.

Concealment Option 2: This one I recommend for useekfile and other torrent boards. It is easiest to install in particular for noobs. This is the one I use as well. The software is free for use to general public. Install a masking software product, like Peer Guardian firewall. Using either a proxy or a masking solution, or both in conjunction, will help hide you from being tracked by investigators or anyone trying to observe your downloading habits. The concealment is not 100%, but close, it is as private as you can get as a public user of the Web.

How Peer Guardian Firewall works:

1. Peer Guardian maintains a centralized database of all the common investigator entities: RIAA, MPAA, MediaForce, MediaDefender, BaySTP, Ranger, OverPeer, NetPD and others.
2. Peer Guardian monitors these investigators' IP addresses by using sophisticated tracking devices. The investigators' digital addresses are then compiled into a centralized "blacklist" that is updated hourly.
3. Peer Guardian then gives away free "firewall" software to users. This software constantly checks the centralized blacklist, and then blocks your IP address from being seen by those investigator IP addresses.
4. You install the free Peer Guardian firewall software on your PC, and it will deflect over 99% of the investigators away from your machine. You will be rendered effectively invisible to anyone on the Peer Guardian blacklist.

PeerGuardian firewall software is compatible with all the major file sharing applications, such as Kazaa, iMesh, LimeWire, eMule, Grokster, DC++, Shareaza, Azureus, BitLord, ABC, utorrent and others. It has very small footprint, so as not to steal system resources. It runs in the background.

Where you can get Peer Guardian Firewall Software:

• Peer Guardian is manufactured by Phoenix Labs (formerly Meth Labs).
• Download Peer Guardian 2 here.

Try Peer Guardian for yourself, and see how thousands of Internet users are protecting their anonymity. Its very easy to install takes 2 minutes, and your safe from prying eyes. Without one of the programs installed above I would not even bother logging on to any Peer 2 Peer networks.

sounds similar to safepeer which i was using with azureus before (i subsequently dropped azuerus cos it's such a resource hog)

@stodan: thanks for your good tips.

I installed the Peer Guardian now, lets hope it will work smoothly and help me "hide" my IP

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Regards, tshugo

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it wont help hide yr IP.

it'll prevent those on the banlist from seeing you.

to hide yr IP, you'd need to go to proxify.com or anonymizer.com and surf through their proxies.
then yr originating IP will be that of your proxy server, rather than your own connection.

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For what it's worth, Peer guardian says it doesn't support Vista, but I am running Vista and it seems to work fine.

Thanks for the info...