I don't know if this has happened to you, before, it happened to me a couple of nights ago, and I cannot replicate it, so I think it's some kind of spamming scheme.

Let's say you do a search for something really hard to find, like... your name if you are not famous, or something you just started sharing.

Most likely you won't find anything, but somethimes, you will get this very surprising results... for example, my name is "ANGEL LEON"

I did a search on it, and I got this:

ANGEL LEON
angel leon
a_n_g_e_l l_e_o_n

and each with like 6 or 8 peers, so I was surprised. The files were 167kb each, when I downloaded one of them, it was a .wmv video showing some advertisement to win an ipod, the same with a jpeg.

So I decided to block the hosts... thinking that would be the solution, cause I thought, this might be some malicious server generating results on whatever they get for a search.

So I tried searching again, and this time, the same thing happened, and each result had different IP addreses, and this was happening with other search strings too, so It's probably like some kind of spyware/malware/spamware that goes into a lot of people's computers without them knowing of it... how do you counterattack this?

I was thinking of a way to do this, but I don't know if its possible with the current resources of the network. There should be a way to flag not only this type of files, but also whoever is serving them, It's pretty much in the way google works, with popularity.

Let's say you download a corrupted mp3, or you get one of this unwanted advertisements, when you delete the file, and the file is no older than 8 hours (for saying X amount of hours), LimeWire should suspect there's something wrong with the file, and ask the user "Why are you deleting this file?" (this could be annoying, so it should be optional),

then the user could have options like:
-> This file is Spam
-> This file was corrupted, I supposed it was intentionally put there by the MPAA (hehee)
-> The file had a virus
-> The file is a fake, it's not what it claims to be
-> I don't want it anymore

So, somehow, Limewire should track its downloads, the file hash, the hosts where it was downloaded from, and flag em! So the content on the network stays pristine.

I don't know... what do you think?

A novel idea, but IMHO, not feasible. It would cause undo congestion on the network.

I also don't think it would work, since the network is made up by users, and has no central server, and how many honestly would answer such a query.

Best thing to do is be selective about the files you d/l and have the appropriate safe gaurds in place on your comp.

If you search(upper right between f.a.q. and home) you will find a lot of information on the subjects.

Have a good day

Amazing how people post on the forum thinking it's the 1st time that problem has ever occured to anybody. This spam issue has been around at least as long as the forum. lol See: autogenerated spam results Sticky (click on link)