Peer to Peer Sharing Software: Whats the Safest and The Best

[pirate]

I would like to know what P2P program is the safest and best to use (i.e Kazaa, Morpheous, IMesh)

[JeepNGeorge]

Although I would never do it, I hear K-Lite++ can't be beat. It's Kazaa stripped of all the adware and nobody can look at all your songs that you have. It's not supported anymore, but you can still find version 2.4.3 on some servers.

[Happy Monkey]

Definitely kazaa lite. But I haven't used it recently, so I don't know if it still is compatible.

[Radar]

It's all about i-mesh, but make sure you also download a free program called "FreeNet". There's a think called the Free Net Project which allows people to trade software anonymously without being traced.

http://freenetproject.org

[vsp]

I tend to believe that there is no such thing as a truly "safe" P2P program. If you're sending packets, _someone_ can find you. The trick is that it usually takes either legal threats or truly egregious behavior on your part for someone to spend the effort necessary to hunt you down, much less for your ISP to feel the need to cut you off.

That said, the primary targets of the Copyright Police are generally the most popular programs at that given time. Hence, I avoid Kazaa and Kazaa Lite, as that seems to be the RIAA's preferred whipping boy these days.

If I'm searching for music, I use SoulSeek. It started out as a Napster clone for European techno/electronica, but now music of all sorts pops up there, and the smaller userbase often means faster download speeds.

WinMX is a second choice, though anything popular there is generally queued beyond recognition.

eDonkey is useful for specific servers that whitelist files, such as the Digital Archive Project, but not necessarily so good if you don't know where to look for what you're looking for.

If I'm digging out files, such as old game ISOs, eMule is slow but steady.

If you can find a BitTorrent group that has what you're looking for, that's often your best bet, though keep in mind that you're leaving your IP wide open via that protocol. As such, try to avoid Suprnova (the biggest BitTorrent dumping grounds around), as it's well known that the MPAA and such are watching it.

[Kitsune]

I tend to believe that there is no such thing as a truly "safe" P2P program.

This is why I hold the idea that the best Peer 2 Peer sharing method is CD-Rs. Ask your friends what they have and start an exchange program.

[Happy Monkey]

The concept of FreeNet isn't that they can't tell that you're downloading, it's that they can't tell what you're downloading. Of course, that could be enough in itself to get you kicked off of some ISPs.

[pirate]

thanks for the tips, what if you were downloading more then music (i.e. small programs, games)

[Radar]

Files are Files

[pirate]

For this freenet project, do you run it while your on imesh or is it a program like imesh. I tried to download that on numerous occasions and either they all have trojan droppers or it cancels midway through and will not download fujlly

[Radar]

I got the full install and it was clean, but at first I thought it would be a P2P client or something. It turns out it just runs in the background while you're using another P2P client.

[pirate]

so if its not a p2p file sharing system, what exactly does it do just hovering in the background. Is it supposed to make your online experience safer or something

[Radar]

I think that's the idea. To be honest I heard about it recently but haven't delved deeply enough into it. I know they don't have a way to search for files. I am pretty sure it's just a way to keep you anonymous while you're searching using another client.

[pirate]

just like freenet

[Radar]

I was talking about freenet.

I-mesh is a fully functional searching client for music, video, software, and other files and while it does install adware (like kazaa), if you run spybot and clean it, the software still works (unlike kazaa).