The problem with hearsay evidence is that the police have
to follow up and get documented evidence to corroborate
before applying for a warrant. It's a step they cannot skip
because executing a search solely on the word of a third
party is a crime in itself.

If they tried to get a warrant without it, they'd be laughed
out of the building.

Tips are good, but you cannot consider them an order to go
through doors and seize evidence. If that was so, anybody
could get police to storm any home with a single phone call.

... with a lawyer message containing a screenshot and an eye-wittness.

Using only a screenshot just got rejected by a court in germany, because the eye-wittness had disappeared. Before that, using just screenshots was common practice.

Question about backing up data before a Nuke
 

Hi guys and gals, I want to use the D-ban program to nuke part of my hard drive. I have a few questions. My situation is this. In the past I have 'possibly' illegally d/l copious amounts of music, movies, porn ect... from lime-wire and other programs. Since then I have deleted it from the shared folders and pasted onto the other partition on my hard-drive for library keeping and then deleted the shared folders. My thinking is this. They can't prove I didn't acquire those files by legal means and since they are all just mp3s and avi's or whatever they should be safe if they are just there or am i wrong?

First: I have all this data on one partition that is just music and movies ect... I don't want to reinstall these if possible cause its like 90 gigs so using this program can I choose to nuke just the partition that windows and programs are on (i.e. limewire and my shared folders ect... and history)? And if so how complete a nuke would this be? Would the other partition which is just media files and never had a program or anything else on it still be vulnerable to incriminating forensic analysis? I guess what I'm saying is does a partition effectively make two separate entities, in which I can clean one and be at ease? Because if alot of what I d/l was maybe pirated media and erasing all the d/l info programs and history ect... from the one partition would erase evidence no?

Also, If I backed up my partition with windows and programs on a blank hard-drive, nuked the partition, and then restored it with the copy on the back-up hard-drive would that just replace the information and stuff I was trying to remove. If so is there a way to selectively back up and nuke so that I don't have to reinstall 50 things in my program file and even windows itself, but still rest at ease knowing that the computers history is fresh at least in the eyes of any potential law in-queries?

Exactly! There absolutely has to be some sort of verified and
solid evidence in hand before the police can proceed.

A phone call or email is never enough by itself, so the police
have to investigate and get some probable cause that a
crime has been committed before getting a warrant for
search or arrest. Someone who has accidentally
downloaded and then deleted a file is never going to find
themselves in such a position because no such evidence
exists. Any search or arrest (which would have to be based
solely on hearsay or suspicion) against such a person would
automatically be thrown out of court as soon as it is
discovered that the mandatory hurdle of probable cause had
been ignored.

Even if a person had been caught with millions of files, that
evidence would be permanently inadmissible if the police
had obtained it illegally. In the case where an innocent
person is illegally tagged with a single file, it would be the
policemen and prosecutors facing criminal charges, not the
other way around.

What you are describing there is a case involving a person
who shares such files, against whom a screenshot
showing the files being shared can be obtained. If
you are imagining a case in which an innocent person could
be logged downloading such a file, don't forget that
the only person capable of providing a screenshot or
testimony is the very same person who is actually
sharing the file and breaking the law. The police
cannot ever commit a crime to catch a criminal, so that
scenario is completely ruled out too.

The bottom line is that anyone who accidentally downloads
and then deletes an illegal file of any kind is completely
safe from prosecution. The only way they could get
themselves in trouble is to let themselves be tricked into
confessing to more than they actually did. Even then, any
competent lawyer could expose the trickery and nullify that
improbable and hypothetical threat.

So, there's not much point in destroying all your data and
reformatting your whole disk when just deleting the file and
defragging or wiping free space is going to work well
enough. In fact, taking such an extreme measure will tend
to indicate to anybody that more was going on and would
tend to raise suspicion.

Just having them is not illegal anyway, no matter how you got them.

Downloading is not going to get you in trouble anyway.
What you have to control or prevent is the uploading of files
from you. If you're not doing that, you have nothing to
worry about because not even the record companies would
sue you if you're not uploading a lot of music.


Most backup software doesn't bother to save the contents of
empty sectors or even the slack space in clusters at the end
of each file so yes, that would be safe. Still, it would be far
faster to use a secure wipe program to just clean up all the
empty and slack space without the long backup and restore.

Some backup software can be made to save a complete
image of a disk, empty sectors and all, so you wouldn't
want to use that feature if you wanted to be rid of old
deleted data.

Thank you mr. Walkhouse for your fast and informative response :) I got a letter from my university informing me that Universal or some studio was able to d/l the movie halfbaked of my pc which i didn't know I was even sharing so they took my internet away (on roomates pc) and i've been a nervous wreck ever since. I will do as you suggested and hopefully this will all blow over.

@sageecl: Please excuse me for not giving you that much feeling of security.

You were possibly sharing it, so they have evidence against you. Be careful in what you do, and get someone skilled in law _now_, so you know how to respeond if someone should suddenly come in.

@Aaron Walkhouse:

Correct information:

Backup software won't copy deleted files, as long as you remembered to empty the trash...


Mistakes:

Just downloading doesn't get you into trouble

In germany downloading is illegal and will get you into trouble.

The law was changed a few years ago, so yout info might just be outdated.

They can't catch you if you don't share

And they can just join the download mesh of your file, so they don't even need to share it. Your client tells them "I have parts a...z of the file". Same is true for BitTorrent and edonkey.

Please research the inner workings of Gnutella before giving this wrong advice again.
A good starting point is Gnutella for Users - Gnufu

The topic is "the download mesh".

The police acts only on solid evidence

Again german law (that's what I know best): If they need to secure evidence, they will get a warrant from a judge. Yes, it will take some time, but a few weeks definitely suffice - and some judges are faster in that than others.

Tell a judge "we have information, that this person shares files illegally, but we need to get his computer to secure hard evidence" and the judge will give you a warrant (more exactly: He'll give the warrant to the police - there goes your computer).

And that search is then authorized by a judge and all "secured" evidence can be used against you in court.

How else should anonymous tips ever be efficient?


Please be more careful what you tell unsuspecting users, especially since you won't be the one running into problems from your info, but others might pay for your carelessness.

Perhaps Germany has always been an anomaly with the
law. Different mindset, I guess, where people and their
rights count for nothing before the almighty State. :rolleyes:

Everywhere else, what I said is quite accurate. The rest of
don't live in a surveillance society where tips are enough to
get things like that to happen, not even if a cop claims to
believe the tipster. In the real world, a police officer has to
swear that he can corroborate his suspicions with probable
cause before any judge will grant a warrant to arrest or
search. That, by definition, means he has seen a crime in
progress or gathered evidence, not that he believed the
word of someone else. If Germany suffers from having a
much lower standard, that's too bad for you, but I suggest
you ask an experienced officer about it before you continue
to paint such a backward picture of law enforcement in your
country. Remember, even in Germany or any other EU
nation, the police and courts know the difference between
reasonable suspicion and probable cause. It's time you
learned it too. :wasntme:

It still doesn't matter if downloading is illegal or not in
Germany. Accessing or possessing such files is illegal
virtually everywhere but those who accidentally downloaded
and deleted such files are still in no greater danger because
of it, since there is still no possibility of prosecution if
they do not share the file and simply delete it, proving their
innocence by action, and having never actually created any
evidence against themselves.

The download mesh is not enough to call probable cause.
That's still just another uncorroborated tip or lead which
they would have to follow up on to get a shared file list.
Since an accidental downloader is not actively sharing the
file, any browse host will not have the suspect file in it and
more importantly will not show the usual suspect pattern of
many more such files, therefore that lead will always be
discarded in favour of real suspects with real collections of
such files.

In addition, even if they had an IP address to look at, any
broad search for such files will never include them as a
source, even if the police managed to connect to them as a
peer. In fact, the lack of response to the files they were
looking for would be proof of innocence as far as an
investigator is concerned, and he or she will move on to the
many suspects for which they actually do have large
quantities of evidence.

Please be more careful what you tell unsuspecting users,
especially since you won't be the one running into problems
from your info, but others might pay for your carelessness.
You are so intent on scaring people unnecessarily over a
theoretical danger which you hold dear but in fact has never
actually occurred, or if it has was so rare and so quickly
dismissed that it may as well have never happened at all.
What you are saying is, in effect, that people's lives can be
totally ruined by random chance simply because they used
Phex, LimeWire or any other P2P to download anything at
all. Do you really want to scare people away from P2P so
much? :p

As for the rest of you ( and sageecl ;) ), you should always
be in control of what you share.

Some P2P applications share the downloads folder by
default, but you can easily change that. It has been a
longstanding problem that some junk files and worms
spread easily simply because so many people are sharing
their downloads without first checking what they actually
have.

Also, don't forget to check the advanced settings for sharing
of partial files, which enables your software to share bits
and pieces of your downloads even before they are
complete files on your own disk. Most software comes with
this enabled by default too.

If you take care of these two details there's no way you can
ever be sued or charged for sharing anything you didn't
intend to share. :cool:

It is good to see that there is at least one other person around here who is trying to tell people about these two fundamental errors commited by most developers. The two default settings mentioned are one of the biggest problems affecting all users and the Gnutella Network.

Allowing the sharing of downloads and partial files, by default, is a disaster for all of us and should be considered as the definition of irresponsible file-sharing.

I was spanking Vinnie over this when he proposed doing it but he was
adamant that it would be good for the network. Partial files is not so
bad but I've been cleaning up after those unchecked downloads ever since. http://www3.telus.net/Aaron_Walkhouse/really.gif

So was my long lost cousin at BS Forums ! ;)

btw, now I understand why Vinnie was so happy on certain days... Spanking, huh ? :eek:

nope...AFAIK dban is for totally wiping a drive, not individual partitions...

your course of action is up to you...at this moment in time the powers of the RIAA/MPAA are waning and the forced forensic analysis of your drive might not happen (it HAS happened to others)...free space wipers and such might do the trick for you....of course the ultimate 'trick' is to throw away the HDD and replace it...

AW's comments in this thread indicate he has never heard the the Candyman Project which was conducted a few years back....the Law was supplying illegal images to ensnare people...apparently totally legal as plenty of people are paying the price for accepting those emails and such (including some law officers...big surprise eh?)....just remember, AW is from Canada and they have different laws than the rest of the planet....

and think of this: if you had spent the time to start a case against an individual, wouldn't you go 'all the way' once you had done a fair amount of work????? admit it, sure you would!

First: It's a tip they can follow up on in the most simple way: Getting a search warrant.

And I don't want to scare people away from p2p. I want to make them aware of the dangers of p2p, so they take the proper precautions to decrease the chance of getting into problems.

Sharing copyrigthed files (which aren't licensed under free or open licenses) in p2p is illegal in almost every country.

And I would be able to spot you as another downloader of a file I download myself - and I could do that at this very moment. There's no mumbo jumbo involved: Just having a look at the candidates section in Phex will get me the IP of anyone who isn't behind a LAN router (about half the people).

That's why I go for anonymous p2p, even though its speed is much inferiour to non-anonymous p2p.

Yes, but it is so freaking efficient for the network to do so...

Sidenote: Only abut 1/4th of the people of whom I download have the file as partial file, so sharing files you're downloading at the moment doesn't really increase speeds that much. But it's likely that the download mesh wouldn't work without partial file sharing.

The "What's new?" search should make it far more efficient, though.

And in anonymized p2p (for example i2phex) sharing partial files by default doesn't create problems. And i2phex works, albeit slow.

why is it that people who try to educate others as to the true nature of what they are doing are considered as trying to ''scare people away from P2P''?????????????

and really, AW, what is your great concern about people using p2p??????? sure, its great for the network and such, but is there some reason you constantly promote the use of such an insecure way of transferring data?

let's take the concept of someone downloading a highly illegal file by mistake...yep, it happens...and the most insidious way it can happen is if you, for example, download a file named 'dscn-1121'....or so it appears in your search result/browse host....if one had taken the time to expand the results (hitting that little +) one might have found that it had another widely used title...but skipping that thought process, you have mistakenly downed a nasty picture of a young child...even if you don't have sharing enabled and immediately remove the file, you will still show up as a search result on another's search for a while!!!!!!! and that may be all that the law needs to start work against you!

if you want some 'education' as to how the law works when it comes to protecting children pay close attention to what going on in El Dorado right this moment....maybe watch a few of those Dateline shows about catching predators....etc, etc, etc...basically take your head out of that hole in the ground and pay attention to what is actually happening across the world right now!....sure, the lawmakers apparently don't regard CP as a big thing, but there is certainly a rather large grass roots campaign being waged against the practice, let me assure you!..and many law enforcers don't give a big flip about the lawmakers anyways, as there are quite a few good laws already on the books....

what really irks me is that the penalties for having a few CP images on a HDD are often harsher than if the offender had actually had physical contact with the child....sheeshus....like life in prison on Arizona for a very small number of files, while a relative who actually rapes a child gets off with a much shorter sentence....


so you go right ahead with your way of thinking AW, but you are seriously uneducated as to what is going on in the world...

and really, what matters here is giving proper information to those who ask for it...how they use it is up to them....

most times the destruction of a HDD is not needed, but if it makes the person who does it happy, then what is the problem???...they are certainly 'safer' than having kept using it...do you argue that logic also???

It isn't that bad: If you have sharing disabled, you won't turn up on a search (Shareaza had that enables, as far as I know, but all others don't - because of technical concerns, not security: Polluting searches with incomplete files was seen as bad).

But you will be seen as download candidate by people who also download the file.

"but you will be seen as a download candidate by people who also download the file"...

OK...that is close enough to what I was saying...of course if one has sharing disabled then they cannot be a true source for the file, but they still show up as apparently being one!....

I didn't pay exact attention to that project going on in New Jersey (the one that got blown out of the water by the whole MediaDefender setch), but I think that all they were doing is looking for people sharing files with a known hash value, and that was all that was needed to start proceedings against the offender....

Note that sharing was the issue again. It always is.

Actually, showing up for a moment as a potential source for
the file would automatically trigger an additional search
through the same network. That's just normal police
procedure which doesn't require a warrant or even any form
of personal contact. But not showing up again as a source
and not being findable in a search for the same file and not
showing any suspect file in a browse is always going to
result in the same thing, being dropped for probable
suspects who do show up on the search and stay there.

The key concepts here are reasonable suspicion
and probable cause.

Reasonable suspicion is grounds for further investigation
but not a warrant, and only if that further investigation
brings up probable cause can any further action be taken.
It's as simple as that, and there's no getting around it. It's
the law everywhere in Europe, North America and all other
countries with a constitutional government and a highly
developed legal system. Any experienced police officer or
prosecutor will confirm it if you go and ask. This legal
principle goes right back to the days when modern law as
we know it was first brought forth and put into force.

There would never and could never be a warrant issued for
a single hit on a single download attempt and police would
never stop checking to avoid not finding corroborating
evidence just so they could beg for a warrant based on one
possible hit.

Show us one person in the whole planet who was ever even
questioned for an accidental download which they then deleted.
Just one will do. How many years did that one get? :p

Never, ever forget: The only thing that will get any
movement at all is a definite indication of sharing of such
files. That means documented verifiable proof that can be
brought to court. A possible indication of a download
attempt which may or may not have failed is not enough if
further investigation yields nothing. This is particularly true
when investigators already have plenty of probable cause
on dozens or even hundreds of other people to work on, and
we already know is happening everywhere because of reports
in the news on the topic.

Clinging to an untested theory for the sake of argument is
not helping those few people who come here for info about
what to do with accidental downloads. If you know
anybody in law enforcement or the courts ask them about
the distinction between reasonable suspicion and probable
cause, or search the web for articles that mention both
terms with that specific wording. Once this central and
basic concept of the law is made clear you will understand
a lot about how the law, the courts and the police work
together to protect the rights and privacy of people like you
and your fears will be somewhat relieved. :D

So is going about without knickers or your trousers when you have diarrhea...

That doesn't make either of them socially acceptable! :thumbsdown:

Quick! Somebody light a match! http://www3.telus.net/Aaron_Walkhouse/tongue3.gif

Does anybody realize the significance of these moments ?

I can only assume that it is from the grim influence of Rip, but this is the absoposifugintootly only time I have ever seen a post from Peerless without his signature. (I used to like dolphins !)

I don't know... Do you think he looks fat in that ? :o

Weren't you two supposed to be in the arena?

Besides: Downloading matters in germany, and since I had to repeat it multiple times:
Talk to a lawyer:
- Internetrecht - filesharing

This also informs, that the new law was made in or before 2004 - downloading has been illegal for four years, now.

Canada was different in 2003 - i don't know the current situation:
- Canada deems P2P downloading legal - CNET News.com

But that the laws don't make sense, since p2p doesn't harm the media industry was clear in 2007 again:
- Official: P2P music not harming Canada | The Register

And, to add to arne_bab's info >

http://www.gnutellaforums.com/lounge...w-changes.html

Check all files with Bitzi before downloading.
Avoid files that have "PTHC" (pre-teen hard core), or "hussy fan" in their name. I suggest you block those.
Delete anything that looks illegal.

The FBI took my friend's computer and found tons of files that he had deleted (and thought he had overwritten) on his hard drive. They found that he had (accidently) downloaded a few PTHC files, but he had immediately deleted them. (My friend is gay - he likes men, not children). He was not charged. They suggested he be more careful - see below. [His case had nothing to do with file sharing.]

The FBI says:
Say you get an illegal item in your mailbox. You trash it right away; no problem.
Get more illegal stuff and trash it immediately; you may have some explaining to do. Keep illegal stuff, even if you don't share it; go to jail.

Downloading child porn, even if you're just curious to see if it's real, encourages the criminals who make that krap; they like to be watched. Let's frustrate them.
There are international agencies that are working to catch these people.

So far it looks like they're getting better at it too. Let's hope this
means they'll be driven out of gnutella over the next few years as
they realize they have no real anonymity here.

paranoid ill
 

I have been violently ill, nauseous, paranoid, the whole 9 yards having downloaded a supposed kp file on accident (meaning i didnt open the file to confirm my fear if it was just a prank file). I first had a filter in with words like child, pedophile, kid, kiddy...but i didnt have pedo in there nor 16yo 17yo, and had 3 files come in under those 3 tags. one was pedo one was 16 and one was 17. I searched my incomplete folder and found them there. My heart started racing and my stomach started hurting and i bagan recitting what i would want to say in court if this **** got deep. it was on accident. now im paranoid. i dont have a floppy drive so the Nuke drive option doesnt seem to be option does it? how can i clean it other than defragging? this is keeping me up at night and driving me insane.

i cant eat, cant sleep, i feel like im going to puke and should just throw my pc away :(

all things considered your worst fear should be the reaction of your significant other, if there is one...and that's if they are keeping track of what you are doing...

if the file is still listed as being there in your OS (i.e. you haven't deleted it yet) then some sort of data eraser set to overwrite the file multiple times should be OK for your situation....if you have already deleted it then defragging and then filling up your drive to the max should remove the data from 'easy' retrieval....

if this is a first time, one time, occurrence then forensic analysis of your HDD would prove that....

darin's boot and nuke is also available in .ISO format which can be put on a CD and booted from just like the floppy file...if you are that paranoid and want to follow that route then be aware that you do have a project for yourself...backing up all important data...doing the boot and nuke...then the reinstall of your OS...make sure to have ALL drivers available for use and install your chipset drivers just after you boot into the clean OS the first time then reboot and install other drivers...the chipset drivers are MotherBoard specific and tell it how to operate with the OS...

I would suggest that the first thing you do after getting basic drivers and such installed is to do a full update on the OS, then start installing the programs you wish...then upon completion of all the dirty work defrag the drive and go on with life....

this has happened before i believe which is why i think i deleted the program awhile back because the program LimeWire had these illegal files to begin with. Then having seen Frostwire and had entered in the keywords in the filter, i thought this wouldnt happen again. I'm thinking about never downloading the damn file searching things ever again cause this is bs theres some much crap on these servers. trying to find a good bdsm video sometimes gay (if that says anything about my orientation) instead i get something potentially illegal. its bullcrap. what happened was i entered gay **** (i like those dramas) and then i just hit shift key to get like all the ones above 10 gigs. so i must have had a good 50 or so legal ones and 3 were under the radar and got in the imcomplete folder. this really scared the turds out of me.

i deleted the files, the entire incomplete folder and defragged almost ten times.

seriously, why doesnt limewire or frostwire just set their own filter on their server already - jeebus

so i can doo al this by burning on a cd..hmm lemmie check n see if i have a cd burner and blank

because there are no servers....sounds like you need to do a little research on modern p2p programs....the only 'servers' are each person's shared folder which is on their own machine....

alright - im still learning bout this stuff, i do appreciate the knowledge. btw i dont have a burner. so they were deleted and defragged. i read up a few posts up that if they are deleted which they are then i stand a chance explaining myself if fbi investigate me, may. but thats their waste of time being A) i dont have any potential or real illegal files on the drive B) they may not have been even real illgeal movies - perhaps they were just tagged pedo or 14yo - but in fact just another misltagged tag (which many seem to be jsut tags, example, was downloading a gay porn tagged gay and came out was about some girl ****ing a guy, mistagged, maybe these were misstagged too)

so im not too worried now that im using my logical brain. its just really doesnt seem worth my stress to use these programs. then again maybe i should look before i leap rather than hit shift and download many files tagged one thing which may be tagged with something else as well.

example: "hey ill enter gay porn into the search" hey look 20 files, weee!!!! click, download all....hey what the? whats this in my folder? oh god what if its real? DELETE DELETE DELETE... this has happened in the past when i download multiple files. thats why i swicthed to frostwire but yet again filtering wasnt enough - means i cant download multple files - i have to read each file being before downloading...which sucks cause i like downloading many files cause many wont download fast enough lol

If you want to read up on p2p, I'd suggest looking at Gnutella for Users - Gnufu

There you can find info how Gnutella works in a style which is easy to understand without having to dig RFCs first.

so being i dont have a floppy, nor a burner, havng defragged the computer ten times and deleted the unwanted files not much else i can do but get a cleaner program i guess and look (read what im downloading) before i leap (download many files hitting shiftkey). i remember back in the old days kazaa didnt have all this crap online

Getting a decent cleaner program is not a bad idea. ;) Also being careful what you download. Using Bitzi, also preview your files as downloading to be sure they are what you were wanting. Movie download issues (click on blue link) & also How to find music in which the same principles apply to videos. :)

In the latter days of Kazaa it did. It was spammed with junk in an attempt to prevent people sharing copyright files in the same way other networks such as Gnutella have been attacked by such organisations; Beware of Fake files in search results, as well as porn organisations attempting to protect their products, spamming samples of their works, generally in .mov format.

An old article, but it still applies now: Quality of Content on the Network (click on link)

thanks man, i just dont find it cute that people tag things like this and even if it isnt real, it still makes people ill. anywho, what cleaners do you recommend. i dont even know what to type in the search engine other than "computer cleaner"

thanks man, i just dont find it cute that people tag things like this and even if it isnt real, it still makes people ill. anywho, what cleaners do you recommend. i dont even know what to type in the search engine other than "computer cleaner"

filtering
 

im taking an extra step on on filtering my frostwire: what other keywords should be in the filter? it seems these days they use alot of slang and special code words to sneak their stuff

Check both Arne_Barbe's post in this thread, also Peerless. In fact, do a search for previous posts by Peerless, he has recommended the best cleaners to go for. Not sure if it's in this thread or not. :)

Not much we can do about the secret tagging. Bitzi is a good way however to check the validity of a file. Bitzi site recently has been under problems, so hopefully it will be back to normal soon.

"Check all files with Bitzi before downloading" is the first line in this thread. Never, NEVER, download files without caution. Bitzi, because of imput by users, can save you hours of useless and dangerous downloading. Any file shared on any network may have info about it on Bitzi. I don't mean just files with a given name, but the exact file (or copies of it). All file types are covered, i.e., audio, video, software, even txt files may have comments about them on the Bitzi site.

In the world of torrents, I never download files that have no comments from other users. Remember, those fake files can really mess up your computer.

Shared files are like Hallowe'en candy; most of it is safe and tasty, but you check out each piece before you eat it.

MY IP address? You can get it?
 

Are you sure you had the IP address? If things were that simple, in the US anyway, you would have cops doing the same thing. Unless I'm wrong a cop with a IP address one can go to Dell or whoever and find out who the machine is registered with for warranty purposes.

Making that knowledge public in most Western countries will scare off every CP distributor of note.

say what????

you're wrong....and IP address is similar to a house address...it is not an ID of the computer....

Hey Aaron, not all underage nudity is porn. Its explicitly defined in the law. Look at all the Fed and Supreme Court decisions on the subject-if its not the product of abuse then it will most likely fall under the protection of the law. You can even go to Barnes and Noble and by books with young teen girls, yes, fully nude. So since you don't have a law degree stop posting idiotic comments that have no logical or legal grounding. Nudity is not porn, its what is being done to the child or teen, and/or what they are doing to themselves.

It really depends on jurisdiction as far as nudity goes. Some states
and countries are stricter than others, some ridiculously so.

IP address vs home address.
 

thanks for that Peer. I'd like to believe that but this site, for a few dollars, claims they can identify your very house with a IP number:

People-Search.com

Or, I think, give me my IP address by entering my home street address.

My point is that if the cops collect my IP address via my downloading or uploading something to/from my PC they can pinpoint the street address.

If I'm allowing someone to collect my IP address and I don't know how to disguise or hide it its effectively public information.

I assume my only option, assuming I'm one of the bad guys here is to dump my computer, get a new one for cash and never register the warranty or anything else for that matter.

And if I want my enemy to get arrested all I have to do is buy his old but registered computer, not change the address, download and share CP then watch the cops fruitlessly raid his home.

I actually hope I'm wrong on all this, that my privacy can't be invaded that easily but with the web site I referred to the scenario is realistic. Show me how I'm wrong. Please

pulease take the time to read my last post, where I quoted your words again...

you stated (and I again quote YOU) "Unless I'm wrong a cop with a IP address one can go to Dell or whoever and find out who the machine is registered with for warranty purposes."

YOU said the law can to to "Dell or whoever......."

I said an IP addy is like an address....

you seem to be having some problems with what's up and down today...been drinking?

Well one of us is. lol

The point is that the cops can peruse my computer for a IP address and come and get me. So you guys in the Western world that have CP, even by accident, should get busy.

Anybody have the address of Fry's?

Even if you had the theoretical victim's computer, intact with everything the same
as when he had it, any IP address you got using it would still lead to you unless
you also tapped his internet connection and used it too. The ISP is who controls
the IP addresses, not the hardware in the computer, and your window of
opportunity would be pretty small depending on how often the ISP sets leases to
expire and how quickly your victim hooks up his next computer to the same
internet account.

Actually having the hardware could make it possible to impersonate the other guy
but you would have to use the same physical connection and do it before he
registers a replacement computer with the ISP. In other words, you would have to
get close enough to be caught in order to try it.