Greetings, and good afternoon.



I'm an eighteen year old who recently committed a horrible atrocity.

A few evenings ago I curiously and impulsively "downloaded" a couple files of illegal pornography. I placed the verb inside quotations because:

I never finished the downloads

Why? I realized I was idiotic for even contemplating such absurdities.

Now, before you judge me...as I hope none of such will be done.

First, it was impulsive, reckless, self-destructive behavior. It was a "spur of the moment holy ****" "Why the hell did I do that" moment.

Secondly, there was absolutely no malicious intent. Why would I care about such material, anyway? It is disgusting after all. More so, I had no intention of exploiting, providing or in any manner even needing said child pornography. I do not have Limewire configured to allow uploads. Midway through the downloads I quit the downloads. I then used Spybot's shredder tool to "destroy" the files. I have also defragged my laptop five times now.

I'm beyond paranoid...more so though, I'm completely devastated by guilt and shame. I had no cruel intentions, but the mere fact that I did it without even viewing the files, is disturbing. I am not some psychologically disturbed, disgruntled or perverse human - I was curious...but curiosity was a tragedy.

I don't know what to expect. I have no idea if I was traced and I'm being investigated. I cleaned the files and it's not like I ever intend to do anything malicious again. I further deleted all the pornographic material I did possess, to "clean myself"

Does anyone know:
What are the odds that a mishap like this could have been traced?

Further, how long would it take for police to show up at my doorstep?


Please, I'm scared. I'm just a college student who has dreams and hopes in life. The guilt is tearing me apart as it is. I'm paranoid beyond belief. Every time a car drives down my street I gaze out the window in hopes it's not a police officer coming to arrest me.

This would ruin my life...everything I have and am would be obliterated because of a careless, stupid and reckless mistake

My great reputation with community members, my education, my personal life, my time...would all vaporize before my eyes.

And I have a deathly fear of incarceration and prison.

If the police were to come to my house...would there be any hope of apologizing, talking about it with them and trying to make them understand that I am human and I have made this mistake?

Also, there is a police officer in the town I live in, whose family and he are good friends with cousins of mine who live in my town. The officer's son is best friend's with one of my cousins, actually. I'm on decent terms with the officer and his wife - (his wife has employment at the high school I attended, so I'd speak with her a lot). Should I maybe talk to them and confess and cry hysterically and hope things work out...

I'm paranoid because of a dumb action...I don't want this to ruin my life.

Firstoff: Keep the paranoia down. You don't archieve anything by acting hastily.

Second: You began downloading files. Get rid of your incomplete folder with one of the data erasers Peerless mentioned. Best also get rid of your download folder. Then erase any of your LimeWire config files (so log files and similar disappear).

Third: The chances of you getting caught when you did it only once and didn't even finish the download are extremely slim. No need to get careless, but also no need to get paranoid.

@all: Please correct me, if anything above is wrong, or if anything could be done better.

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ummm sorry about my spelling I was in a rush, but yeah i also have the same paranoia, but anyhows I found the files by doing search and typed in keywords and I found them and deleted them, are they gone forever?

deletion of files only does one thing...the fact that they are on your HDD is simply removed from the operating system's sight...the files are still there and can be recovered very easily...the only way to even come close to truly getting rid of the data is to physically overwrite it with an application such as those I mentioned above...even then with time and money they can still most likely be recovered if someone really wants to...

__________________


So Long and Thanks for All the Files
_____________________________________________

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Deleting a file simply removes its 'address' and makes the space available. The data at that address will be there until it is overwritten. If only part of the data is overwritten, the rest of it will still be there. The government uses software that deletes, writes (usually 1's and 0's), and deletes again, a few times, to ensure that data cannot be retrieved.

Defragmenting will overwrite some of the (deleted) data, as it moves files on the disk. But just figure that whatever you put on your disk will be there for awhile, even if you deleted it, defragged, and added a bunch of new stuff.

Should you worry? Not in any of the circumstances described in the above posts. Uncle Sam is not coming after you for downloading a couple of files that you shouldn't have. If they did that, then most of those illegal videos would not be available for you to download!

For those uninitiated, we're not talking Tracy Lords, (who did X-rated at age 17), but actual [I]child [/I******ography. If you've never seen it, trust me, ignorance is bliss. The makers of this crap are sick criminals who like to be watched (for some, it's part of their motivation). So if you download it, you're rewarding them, while contributing to the continual abuse of the children.

To Hungry Ghosts, above, there's a big difference between thinkin' and doin'. People can steal anything you own, but they can never take your dignity; that is something only you can destroy. Yours seems to be quite intact. Don't be hard on yourself for being curious. Take pride in your self-restraint!

I'm just scared. I stupidly downloaded a few child pornography images out of some reckless impulse. I don't want my world to obliterate as a result. I was an idiot for that. I'm a college educated student with many opportunities, and I do something so mindless...for what, some stupid self-indulgence that's pointless and illegal? I don't understand this still...I'm trying to make sense of it. I'm still trying to understand a temporary lapse of reasoning and a moment of...derangement?...that crossed my mind.

Blah!

I don't need my life to be ruined by a judicial process and incarceration because of this. I've suffered torment already just worrying.

It would help me if I knew how long it typically took for police to execute a search and seizure warrant. Does it take hours? - Days? - A week?
A month?


How long must I worry until I can move on and accept the idea that I screwed up, made a mistake, and can continue with my life. I don't want to suffer because of a 1:00 a.m. impulse.

And still, I feel if I do end up investigated...I'm going to prison no matter what. It seems like the law is set up entirely against you. Lawyers carry enormous expenses on the federal level, and the law is just going to call you guilty. I doubt I could use some pathos - soothing argument on a jury, reminding them that they too are human and have made mistakes, and may regret many mistakes in THEIR lives.

This isn't fair. This isn't right. I'm sorry for everything, but I'm fearing the worst... It's hard to find pride when all I feel are shame and paranoia.

It's very good that you are scared. Hopefully it will keep you away from this dangerous precipace forever. Please let it. By opening that door, you would not only harm your soul by opening yourself up to harmful behavior, you would ruin your life. You would be given a label you could never escape from that would cause your neighbors to hate and fear you. Thank you for seeing the danger for what it is, very real and please go and stay free of these things.

As I understand it Gnutella acts only as a mechanism to bring two users together. Then one user can down/up load files from their PC to the other. No note of IP addresses is made by either PC or the P2P such as Limewire.

I've read about efforts to make the P2P facilitator such as Limewire record the IP addresses but I understand they have failed so far. Once the transfer is complete no record exists that it even took place.

Am I incorrect?

not sure what you mean by record IP addys...there are plenty of gnutella clients besides LW that list IP addresses...

__________________


So Long and Thanks for All the Files
_____________________________________________

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Although I cannot argue with the feelings expressed here I'm afraid that some people posting here are speaking from a moral rather than from a legal standpoint.

This serves to unnecessarily scare those of us who downloaded by accident and erased. If you fit into this category quit worrying. The authorities are concentrating on uploaders. In the lower left hand of LimeWires screen is a option to view uploadable files. If these are free of CP then you are free to go about your business.