Roanoke-Chowan Community College

Institutional Technology & Computer Services

Don't use P2P (Peer to Peer) Software

Don't use peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing software (e.g., BearShare, Grokster, gnutella, Kazaa, Bit Torrent). This software is inherently insecure and can share the entire contents of your hard drive with the Internet! Many new types of malware (malicious software) target P2P users exclusively.

When using this software the Internet comes to be seen as one large shared computer (especially for music and video file sharing) or one big real-time chat room. P2P technology has positive potential to increase productivity, but it also has a much more threatening negative potential to introduce a new class of security threats.

P2P technology can undermine network security and can leave computing devices open to threats ranging from violations of intellectual property laws, viruses, malware that is undetected by antivirus protection, password and data theft, to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks that flood the network with data and incapacitate computers.