SECURITY- why do some share entire HD?

C

Confused44

New member
I have noticed that some Gnutella searches return results that do not match the filename, but match the path the file is stored in on the host computer.

A little further checking and I figured out that some idiots are sharing their entire hard drive with the whole world. Just do a search with "doc" or "cookies" or "documents" or "personal" and you will see what I mean.

I am guessing a lot of users do this to make it look like they are sharing a bunch of files with the network, so they won't appear as leeches to other gnutella hosts.

I think that Gnutella developers should make some sort of standard warning to users, to let them know not to share any personal files or anything that they don't want everyone to see, and that once shared, they will never be able to know every place their files went.

Also, is it a good idea for a gnutella client to return a match when the search term matches the path name but not the filename?
 
Searching on the path can actually make your life much easier. Stuffing everything in the filename doesn't always work well.

For example, MAME rom files must have specific names, so if you share....

Emulation/MAME/Roms/...

people looking for "MAME roms" will find them. Without this you'd have to rename every rom to begin with something like "MAME ROM - pacman.zip", but this name won't work with the emulator making it so you can't share the same files you actually use.
 
if you're stupid enough to share the entire hd it's your own fault. I think it is a good thing that it is possible.

how else could you aquire ppls cd keys and such?

just kidding...
 
Limewire asks to scan your harddisks for files to share.... I never did this, but I think this might be a reason.... Does anyone like to check it out ?
 
Good point. I know this is a napster-esque feature some peers have. The idea is it encourages newbes to share more files. The problem is, unlike napster, we're not just sharing MP3's and there's a good chance of something unintended or personal getting caught in the mix.
 
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