Well, it may not be hard to mask the ip address as an option.

Users could turn their IP ON or OFF at will on the fly.

Another possibility is that a MASKED or FAKE IP could be entered in its place that is not traceable on the internet, but that works on the p2p network for still allowing connections in and out, so a form of NAT (Address Translation) sort of a temporary proxy for security.

These ideas may be a bit more difficult to produce effectively for our LimeWire coder staff, but i heard that they have some pretty good skills none-the-less, and might hire another software engineer.

Its mostly a matter of 'Why they don't want to put this in'. If it was that good, they probably would have put it in already, and they haven't.

There is another program that offers secure connections called earth station 5 or something like that.

The downside to avoiding the security issue is that the limewire userbase shrinks. For instance, all but 1 of the last 30 limewire users that i talked, claim that they disconnect limewire at ALL times except just for a few minutes when they want a file, due to its lack of protection and security.