Suspicious Email

[Sid Hartha]

Any AOL users out there get one of these?


Originally posted by email from: HOST KO Cowboys
Dear Member:

We are writing on behalf of America Online, Inc. We received a complaint from BayTSP that Screen Name XXXXXXXXXX used AOL connections to conduct the peer-to-peer exchange of copyrighted Movie files owned by its members at the following date and time Jan 16 2004 2:44 EST, without permission from the copyright owners.  Such alleged activity, if the complaint is true, violates AOL's Terms of Service (TOS). Please refrain from using your AOL account to exchange unauthorized copies of copyrighted materials.  Repeated violations of TOS may result in termination of your account.

If the alleged activity was not conducted by yourself or a member of your family, but you believe an unauthorized individual was using your AOL account at the day and time identified above, please call us at 1-888-265-3733 immediately so that we can take appropriate action to protect your account from future misuse.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,
Kellon
Community Action Team
America Online, Inc.

...just curious.

[Switeck]

That is almost certainly a REAL warning email and should be treated as such.
BayTSP is a VERY aggressive p2p copyright spy which if you are NOT aggressively blocking (ie: updating the blocklist weekly and ALWAYS leaving it on) then you will be found by them eventually.

On Kazaa Lite K++, even disabling sending your shared file list to other users won't protect you because they are finding your files via regular searches.

BayTSP MAY even be running 'honeypot' supernodes which are ILLEGALLY HACKED to record the sharing lists sent to them when nodes connect to them, thus spying in ways normally impossible on Fast Track. (This is illegal because it violates Sharman's copyrights for Kazaa AND violates users' privacy the same way illegal wiretaps do!) Proving this is nearly impossible, because they would block any legal attempts to find this out with ease. Proving it legally using technological means may well be impossible too...

However, the MORE information we gather using Peer Guardian (or other firewall program) connection logs, the better our chances of proving their existance AND manner of operations.

[Sid Hartha]

Nope.
Turns out it was just spam. AOL had nothing to do with it.
Which makes sense anyway, since I never d/l movies (as the letter claimed).

[SeK612]

There have been some posts from users who are on AOL and have received "cease and desist" letters. They may include your IP address at the time and specify a specific file your were uploading / downloading. You should do things like check the headers of the any such emails to give you a clue from where they originated (which will get rid of any simple spam mailers) and possibly contact your ISP directly (not using the address in the email but the normal support one) saying something along the lines of "I got this email but I don't use P2P, could you clarify?" (if the original email was legit they will give you more info if not they will say so).