The "anything That Can Go Wrong With Bittorrent Post"...

If you are reading this after getting your torrent client, routers and firewlls configured correctly, I applaud you

If you are reading this after reading the first half and you haven't installed or configured anything, I salute you.

Now that we've all hopefully gotten up to speed in that we will have active BT clients getting data, sharing data, reporting stats and generally broadcasting our IP addy and what we are doing all over the f**king world, what's the next step?

Hiding our IP address from the internet boogeymen.
(That's a bit of drama, but the reality is alarming too.)

Is there some way of finding out the IP addy's of corporate software vendors who might be nosy, the sods that they hire to sleuth for them who are nosy and the general cr*p. stolen IP servers, spammers, etc.?

Well it exists in the form of plugins for clients, separate apps like PeerGuardian or Protowall and built-in application support.

They use a list of IP addresses compiled by various sources to say to your connection: "Psst, hey mate. He's a bit of a tosser" and act as an internet bouncer. They tend to stop not only the request from the source, but also they occassionally stop data from being sent to the busy-body by other requests.

Requests for data from you that get dropped are repeated a few times over a short period of time and then dropped for a while. They often are repeated several times before giving up. They can also run non-stop for long periods of time. On public boards you can get thousands of "hits" a day, depending on what you are interested in.

To lighten the mood a bit, if they are unable to get data from you and send no data (possibly corrupted) to you, you do not exist and hopefully will never exist on a list of IP addresses presented to a judge or ISP.

I personally use Protowall with lists from Bluetack a.k.a B.I.S.S. and update them daily.
According to the figures, I am currently blocking some 54% of available IP numbers, including stolen IP addresses, spam'n'porn IP addresses, known anti-P2P IP addresses yet I can do almost anything I need on the 'net as these tools can be set up to accept possible "bad" IP addresses as o.k. to access.

Your bank website and those sort of places are often on these lists (at B.I.S.S. I think mine is part of the Level 2 corporate list), but some lists are so comprehensive that they can also be used for corporate security.

As a minimum, even coming only to Gesh, you should use something to help yourself security wise.

On speculating for the benefit of users who also use some public sites, I'd think that blocking 54% of the internet isn't going to hurt either.

and remember the motto: NO SECURITY MEASURE OR COMBINATION OF MEASURES IS 100% FOOLPROOF!!!!!!

Your ISP - Business pitted against itself - What do you give every month to your ISP that you don't give to massive media companies?

If you get suspected of anything, you often get a letter and your ISP likely has a decent steno pool.

Ignore the letter and play low for a bit, they want your business. If they wanted you arrested, you wouldn't have gotten a letter.

If they do call and ask about the change, tell them your cousin phoned from the shop "Something he called a trojan" and you indefinitely grounded your son for "leaving his rubbers laying around in plain view by the hard drive thing". Ask them immediately if they have noticed an improvement on their end and they will not pry. Trust me.


Use whatever anti-virus you feel works best for you, and on a philosophical ending, also use the anti-virus program your worst enemy would use. Just not at the same time, especially both running active monitoring.