Dear Richard

There are some risks when you share files on your HD but these can be minimised. However, unlike Hellbornepathogen I don't believe you should disable sharing because being on a P2P network is all about sharing.

To make the risk to your computer as small as possible there are a number of steps you can take, I will relate mine:

1) LW defaults to sharing "C:\Program Files\Limewire\Shared", I decided to buy an external HD and have my shared folder on there. That way it is extremely difficult for a rogue program, virus, spyware or whatever, to do any damage.

2) Always run your anti-virus and anti-spyware apps as frequently as you can, I would suggest daily.

3) Make sure that your Firewall stealths all ports, and test it at Shields Up to insure that it is working as expected.

4) Install Prevx Home V2, this sits behind your firewall and stops anything that is secretly trying to install itself on your PC.

5) Always run Peer Guardian 2 when running LW or any other P2P software, you will be surprised by the number and types of organisations trying to sneak into your PC via port 6346.

6) And finally, a bit of common sense goes a long way, e.g. don't download anything from untrustworthy sites, keep away from WMA and WMV files, make sure that your protection software and security updates for your OS are all up to date.

The internet can be very dangerous and hazardous to your PCs health, P2P networks can sometimes bring that danger closer to you than you would like. But as long as you take the necessary precautions then there is no reason why you should be scared of sharing.



UK Bob

PS. Hellbornepathogen vision may be somewhat skewed when it comes to LW and how to use it, I believe he bought his FREE copy of LW through a scam site.