Hi Limewire; I am relatively new to Limewire, and have been shocked to see a number of horrifying child pornography titles appearing in totally innocent word searches. I have obviously not tried to download any but there seems to be a number of your members that have these on their computers. I would like to know what you are doing about it to prevent these sad sickos from sharing their illegal filth?
Trixiebelle

Well, first, the LW users are not Members, meaning that they do not pay to access the Gnutella net.
Second, Limewire has no control over what files are being shared by any given user. Normally, this is a good thing since everyone wants their privacy. Buuut, unfortunately there are people who take advantage of this situation to do many many things, one of these being what you mentioned.

Also, consider that some users serve files with fake names, so some of these offending titles might not be what they claim to be (double-edged knife, since you might stumble in a porn file while trying to dld a movie...)

What can we do?

Hmm, as a user, the thing that I can do is, whenever I find a user that serves fake files and/or file that I find offending, I block them.

Also, when searching, you can choose to not display adult-oriented files.

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First of all as mentioned above LW, the owners, admins, and members of this forum have absolutly no control over what is shared over the Gnutella network. It has probably become obvious to you that LW can be used for numerous illegal and malicious purposes (Warz, Appz, keygens, illegal porn,... you name it). It is you decide to do about it is your choice. In my opinion the illegal content that a person is supposedly hosting should be varified before the IP is reported to proper authorities. Although, a regular person like me and you (probably) would be in violation of the law if we tried to varify the content of those files. So... my advise is to set your filter to filter out files with word as seen in the porn titles (they need no repeating in this place). But other than that, there's not a lot you can do about it. My thoughts.

deepblue

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Thank you for your replies and I have taken note of all of your comments. What was shocking to me was that the search words I was using were totally innocent and therefore it would be hard to filter out of a search. And I am not against porn! But I am very much against the abuse of children. I will definately be sending any information that ever does come up again on my computer to the relevant authorities and letting them investigate to see whether or not these are crank titles or real. But some of the descriptions in the movie titles were horrifying enough on their own; you would have to be an utterly contemptable pervert to even consider downloading one of these movies for the titles alone are appalling. I would therefore hope that ANYONE seeing these titles would simply forward the details onto an authority who can investigate it properly! thanks for your time!

Re trixiebels problem - I would imagine then that i have no chance of removing the search option for adult material my 13 yo has found. hes banned for the moment until i get a net nanny type programme, but i dont want to deny him legitimate music sharing. if the adult search option is unchecked surely its easy for any user to re check it? any ideas?

NB I am not a junior member - now updated profile

You can set your filters to only allow MP3 files through. That should keep porn (and just about every other non-mp3 file) out. Good luck.

deepblue

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Dear trixiebelle27

Just one small point, you said;

I don't think the authorities would appreciate being inundated with fake files, which is a waste of their time, especially when there are real perves out there to be caught and fake files by themselves are not illegal.

Although this will be unpleasant for you but it would save time, and get the authorities on the right track, if you verified that the files you download are what they claim to be. Otherwise you may be seen as just another well meaning "busy body".



UK Bob

as for ukbobboy01 post, as Peerless mentioned above many places have laws prohibiting the downloading of such material as in New Mexico. My opion it is better to let the authorities investigate than take a chance on a life sentence. It would not take the authorities that long to realize it may be a fake. They probably have a list already of fake files. But there are some sovreign countries that have no regulatory laws in place to control this type of sick activity. Also the authorities may have planted these files in an effort to track these sick people also.

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Trixiebell I was pretty darn horrified myself, I have calmed down a lot since reading this part of the forum and I will be more careful in future.

Dear All

Whereas I don't agree with Fabion on sending fake files to the authorities he has a point when he says that there are some places in the world that has no laws against this sort of activity.

To be safe, if you download this stuff by mistake, send the files to the authorities then delete them from your hard drive.

As for the authorities planting fake files, this can only be effective if they contain spyware.



UK Bob