Originally posted by james_bond_rulez@19 January 2004 - 06:43
and I dont care what packets u throw around u still have the ip number stuck with u whenever ur on the internet. TCP and UDP allike, whenever u connect to a supernode, or a tracker, or a peer ur ip is THERE, there is no erasing it.
Even though Kazaa/KL++ uses UDP packets sometimes, it *IS* possible to prevent some of the searches from reaching you. The incomming UDP packet won't be blocked, since it won't appear to have an illegal origin. But your connection's outgoing ip packet WILL, which can be blocked if that ip is included in BannedIpRanges.txt!

On BearShare or Shareaza (when connected to regular Gnutella), even though searches come through other UltraPeers, if the final destination is a blocked ip then the search WON'T be replied to. And UltraPeers don't even know what you're sharing -- they only get a bitmask of keywords which each bit can match 10's even 1,000's of combinations.

If you had 'perfect' information about the hostiles on BearShare or Shareaza, and you ran with Browse Host disabled (so they couldn't list your files), and in the case of BearShare you ran in only connect to BearShare secure mode then your chances of being caught would be very, very low. If the bad guys have your ip address alone and can presume you ARE connecting to file-sharing networks but don't know what you're sharing/downloading... then they really CAN'T do much unless they want to be breaking the laws themselves. Masqurading as 'private users' broadband connections instead of using business broadband accounts is actually a form of violation of service agreements (even potentially fraud) on many/most ISPs.

Problem with BearShare is its connectivity isn't so good yet due to MASSIVE changes being made to the program -- but that should stabilize in less than 3 months. They just added partial file sharing, so it acts more and more like BitTorrent so long as additional sources (esp from Alt Locs) can be found.