You can apply this great visual summary to movies, music, books, you name it. I envy my children’s children, who may live in a world where this kind of dumb shit doesn’t happen.
Just kidding, of course they won’t live in such a world.
Anthony Hecht is The Stranger's Chief Technology Officer. He owns no monkeys. More by Anthony Hecht
Pirated files are loaded with trojans. Enjoy cleaning that shit off your box.
#1: Um audio files and movies don’t have “trojans.” If you’re bittorrenting computer programs run a virus scan or just read the comments on a reputable site.
If you want “trojans,” use a kindle or itunes and get guaranteed drm/spyware trojans.
Should be re-titled “Why Dumb Users Don’t Work.” Why run it under Windows when there’s a perfectly good Mac console?
You want Trojans and viruses? Use Microsoft shit!
@1 you fail at computers
@6 ftw.
@1 is correct, you naive naive fools.
My comment for here ended up in the Liz Chaney thread an now a mean old man is making fun of me there!!
Um, what’s DRM?
@10 – it’s pretty easy to have a file with embedded code, although the exploits depend on the browser and image viewer combo.
By the way, feel free to press F1 on your XP machine when the ad tells you to … sucker.
Considering that Audible (for instance) charges you a monthly fee to be a member and charges you for each individual download, I’m willing to take my chances with torrents, and hope my anti-virus and firewall software are worth a damn. IMO, you can go with a charge per download or a monthly fee, but not both. That’s ridiculous.
@12 – yup, there have been many exploits of this nature. This is why we do fuzz testing (among other things): any time you accept an input into a system, you are increasing the attack surface. More sophisticated exploits can and do happen, but that’s why you update your system, right? Right!?!
That being said, the communities in reputable sites tend to police the content well. Keep your AV definitions up to date as well as your OS security updates and updates for the programs that will consume the content; all that, and you should be golden. Most of the malicious files on P2P networks are known exploits that have been patched/addressed by those updates you should have installed.
@10 Will in Seattle is an anti-Microsoft nut who appears to have a pathological need to slam MS regardless of whether his comments are accurate or not.
What happened they shit in your cornflakes? I may not like them much (linux solves most of my needs) by your comments come off as just over the top crazyflakes. Christ, get some therapy.
Yeah, sure, go ahead and load up on free files you got off bittorrent. Put all your faith in the dedicated “policing” of the honorable bitorrent, uh, “community”. And faith that your anti-virus definitions are updated faster than the latest exploits. You do that.
Just don’t complain to me about having to wipe your drive and reinstall Windows for the sixth time this year. Or cry about how it’s all Microsoft’s fault for their lame security. I don’t want to hear it. Have fun with that.
I’ve gotten 50 gigs or so worth of torrents in the last 6 months on my shitty pc with no problems.
@14 – it’s mostly how we parse the file headers and other data. If the image/browser software properly bounds checked the values and tossed invalid files … but …
@15 – why do you think there are so many patches for the image viewers? because somebody found an exploit – it happens in all OS, just way more often in MSFT due to how they do testing. No OS is immune.
1. I have found that people who are scared of torrenting generally just don’t know how to torrent properly. There are stupid ways to do it, and much, much better/safer ways to do it. But not everyone is a tech-head, and anyone who doesn’t really know what they’re doing is better off just staying away from torrents.
2. Mac fans: you do realize the main reason Macs get less nasty stuff is because the nasty stuff is made to work on Windows, right? The primary thing making your Mac safer than a PC, virus/trojan/worm wise, is that most hackers can’t be fucked targeting Macs when Microsoft has more active PCs out there.
3. Not entirely related, but the frustrating multi-step process reminds me of getting Games for Windows Live up-and-running recently. I just wanted to play my damn game, but they make you download, reboot, sign up, update, etc. Damn thing wouldn’t work after an hour and a half anyway, I had to download the standalone version.
@20
1. I intend to live forever – so far so good.
2. The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
3. Not related at all.