How To Be Safe On Peer-To-Peer (P2P) Networks

P2P networks, or peer-to-peer, are quite popular. Such networks (e.g. BitTorrent, eMule) help people find and share whatever they want. However, P2P networks and clients are not always secure and safe for your computer.

Here’s how to be safe on peer-to-peer networks in 4 easy steps

1. Never use peer-to-peer on a corporate network

Without permission, you should never install a P2P client or access such a network because you may bottleneck the network’s bandwidth.

Even worse, you may accidentally share or allow access to confidential files which may cause a lot of problems with your boss.

2. Carefully choose the peer-to-peer client

Some P2P clients may be still under development, therefore, may be full of bugs which can cause lags and even crashes for your computer.

As P2P clients are hosted on every computer on the network, in part, so peer-to-peer clients may be replaced with malicious software that can install viruses, trojans, or other malware software on your computer.

However, such thing is rare since P2P providers have lots of safeguards activated.

3. Never share your root directories

Each P2P client has a default sharing folder in which you should place the files you’d like to share. However, the folder is changeable and many users mistakenly choose to share their root directories (‘C:/’).

If doing so, you’ll only let others to virtually access every file on your computer.

4. Scan every file that you download

As we all already know, some files on the Internet contain malicious software. Many files of such type are found on P2P networks.

To avoid downloading and installing malware, viruses, or trojans on your computer, you should always keep your Antivirus software running and to scan every file that you download via P2P networks.