Anonyminity

hey im kind of new to p2p and i was wondering if anyone knew
the anonyminity rating of some of the more popular p2p programs
thanx in advance

[multi]

ants,mute,waste
these ones have encryption
waste is more for small groups of people
that know each other (max:50)
the others, i am not too sure about..pretty much the same i think
but let you have larger groups
but are only ever as secure as the group involved
maybe missing one or 2 here
freenet isnt a p2p app..but you can run one from inside freenet
theres stuff like DC(direct connect) and IRC that can be quite secure
but dont really use encryption

any of the public networks like fastrack,gnutella1&2, edonkey..etc
are well....public
your IP is avaiable to whoever is on there

using peer guardian or protowall with the public networks will only
filter out known malicious IP's..but i thinks its not a bad idea to use either of these great programs and the latest blocklist

that being said..the internet wasnt really designed for anonyminity
for a transfer of data to work it has to find the IP of the machine to send it to..

proxy servers are one way people mask their ip
but you can pay for that with connection speed
unless you pay out some money for a good one
even then your anonyminity is in the hands of that server operator

there are bound to be more and more public network scams that claim to give you anonyminity or that you will be safe(r) somehow if you pay them some fee for it
but these are just free programs and flog by scammers...be wary

keeping your computer free of trojans,adware,spyware and other virii..helps keep you off the radar..imo

[TankGirl]

As Multi mentioned, ANts and MUTE are open networks designed to provide IP number anonymity with a smart, organically inspired routing method. Also Filetopia is worth mentioning here. Their approach is more straightforward, based on anonymizing middleman (proxy) nodes that they call 'bouncers'.

It's hard to rate the anonymity quality of these programs as their stealth capabilities depend on factors like the number of people in the network, the size of files being shared and of course the type of attacks (see for e.g. this article). MUTE and ANts are probably your best choices anyway today if you want to remain anonymous while filesharing - the downside is that these networks don't have yet much content nor are they fast.

- tg