File Sharing: The Risks of Peer-to-Peer and Illegal Downloading
Peer-to-peer technologies facilitate the sharing of information between computers. When a computer is participating in a peer-to-peer network, it could be used to download information, upload information or both. Care must be taken when using peer-to-peer clients because a misconfiguration could unintentionally expose private information on the local computer. It might also allow a computer to become a distribution source for malware.
To address these concerns, the UCLA IT Security Team has compiled a series of instructions customized to each major peer-to-peer application that are intended to outline methods to securely and safely use peer-to-peer applications for both the Windows and Mac OS X platforms.
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On the drop-down sidebar to the left, this green dot indicates that this peer-to-peer software does fully limit file sharing (uploading) |
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On the drop-down sidebar to the left, this red dot indicates that this peer-to-peer software does not fully limit file sharing (uploading) |