Naive p2p users certain to be trackedNew research claimsBy INQUIRER Newsdesk: Thursday, 11 October 2007, 11:45 AM ACCORDING TO NEW research from the University of California-Riverside, naive newbies on the p2p wagon will be trading information with "fake users" 100 per cent of the time, says Ars Technica.The boffs were on a mission to find out just how likely it is a user would run into a fake user - perhaps an agent of the RIAA or similar - and run the risk of a lawsuit. They set about by collecting over 100GB of TCP header information from p2p clients using a tweaked p2p client.The paper, which can be read here - though it's a PDF - found that users who don't use a blocklist will definitely be tracked. All of the test p2p clients which didn't use a blocklist wound up connected to an IP address that appeared on the lists. Trackers are sneaky too, it would seem - companies have gone to great lengths to not seem obvious, with only 0.5 per cent of blocklisted addresses could be easily traced back to media companies.Potential pirates take note: while not using a blocklist could land you in heaps of trouble, if you're using one you need only avoid the top 5 blocklisted IP addresses to reduce the risk of being tracked to around 1 per cent, says the paper. µ
