Dear Limewire People if you are the people that have any authority over the creation of new versions of limewire please take this into account before you make the next version. I use limewire for all my musical needs and i recently had a computer crash because of files that i needed to download for personal reasons, anyways all these files within them had a virus, every single one i had to take the computer to the shop, and the tally of viruses on the computer racked up to a nuclear amount of 45,000+ this is unacceptable and i do not believe that this should happen to any of the users that use your download source i think that you guys need to spend some serious amout of time now for the next version of limewire so that all infected virus files are gone please take this into consideration cause i do not appreciate having to pay $200.00 to get viruses from your service off my system ok im a very popular person i am a private dj and recording artist/producer am quite powerful and i need a file service such as yours to put out stuff that i record if your service is not safe, not only will you loose me as a devoted customer and user of your service but i will find a way to hurt your ability to run your service but i really wouldn't want to do that seeing how i really like your service alot thanks to whoever reads this and please get back to me as soon as possilble and please try to eliminate infected files please a limewire user Anthony

Hi. This forum is frequented buy users of Limewire and might just occasionally be glanced at by the powers that be.

It is a well known fact, I hope, that connecting a computer to the internet, is a risky business and there are thousands of viruses out there. If you use Internet Explorer to visit internet sites and download things from them, there is a risk that these things will contain viruses. You should have anti-virus software on your computer to catch these before they infect your computer. If you do not, and your computer gets infected, if really cannot be said , (on this occasion at any rate) that Microsoft is to blame.

Limewire is an application that connects two computer users together over the Gnutella network, and what these people download and upload is up to them. Limewire has no influence over their choices and has no ability to vet what files are being exchanged. There is no central point through which files can be scanned for viruses or anything else. There is no "Download Source" as you put it!

There is considerably more risk of picking up a virus from a p2p network than there is from an internet web site, and so it is imperative that users of p2p applications use adequate virus protection. Regular readers of this forum know this. Anyone who had taken time to read the Limewire faqs will have read:-

"Q: Might I download a virus using LimeWire?

A: LimeWire does not keep any record of files being shared on the Gnutella Network, nor does it scan any files being uploaded or downloaded for viruses. Therefore, if you attempt to download a virus-infected file using LimeWire, you will be vulnerable to any viruses contained in that file. Generally speaking, you should be very careful when downloading files with a .exe or .vbs suffix, since these files are more likely than most to be viruses. LimeWire's Library will also not launch these files, so you can only run a file with a virus from outside LimeWire. (LimeWire's Library will not launch exe, vbs, lnk, bat, sys, or com files.) Scanning the files you download with some sort of virus-protection software is also a good idea."

and whilst the wording of this could be made more emphatic, the message is there.

Whilst I understand your feeling that Limewire has let you down, really, as you can see, the fault does not lie at Limewire's door. Every computer user with access to the internet MUST take every precaution to see that viruses do not get onto their computer.

If I've overlooked anything in your post, forgive me but the lack pf punctuation made it a hard read

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Wow, well I can certainly tell why you might be angry about paying $200.00 and then getting infected. However you might want to think about a couple issues before you allow your type A personality to get the best of you and make you come off sounding like a complete jerk. First, Limewire is open source, meaning not only is it offered for free, but that the people that provide it do so based almost entirely upon their free time, and that most developers are not paid for offering their services. Also that your threat of making business bad for them is actually punishable in a court of law, I know it sounds weird that empty threats could be punished, but that doesn't make it any less true. So personally I would think that rather than accuse others of not doing their job and properly providing you a product that you also realize that it is your responsibility for the things that you download. Not only for liscensing purposes, but also making sure that you are not uploading or downloading files that contain virus, worms, spyware, adware, trojans, etc...... As it is everyones responsibility to maintain their own systems integrity. So think about these things before you threaten to ruin someones business, especially when they do the majority of the work for this product at no charge. Personally I would like to thank the entire Limewire team for the product that I continue to enjoy for all my music, program and text file needs. Keep up the great work guys, and if I catch a virus, then I guess I'm doing something wrong and need to fix it.