Vinnie, the God and dictator of Gnutella loves his program name so much he made a secret little keyword that seems to bypass all sorts of safeguards. What's the keyword?

"bearshare"

That was hard to figure out wasn't it?

Go ahead, try it. Search for bearshare and you will find stuff like I did! I didn't use bearshare to get these search results, it may block them.

Filename: brianna@bearshare[1].txt
Contents:
LastVisitCookie
143145399
bearshare.net/
0
620126208
29536452
2238848912
29416453
*

So now I just connect the IP with all her MP3 files and I have more proof for a lawsuit. Just think if poor brianna had used her last name!

Go ahead, search for "bearshare bossname" (bossname is your boss' name, or your spouse or whatever) let us know what shows up! I DON'T KNOW HOW FAR THIS GOES!

Vinnie doesn't care about your privacy, it's taken major pressure to get him to get rid his spyware and he continues to use a browser tie in (to IE of all the stupid ideas, no way to turn it off, forced - controlling what you do) and who knows what cookies are getting out over the net.

Do we know what else bearshare does without your knowledge? Do you trust your privacy to a guy who wants to rule the whole Gnutella Net?

Vinnie now says he's going to delete any messages he doesn't like from his forum. So this privacy information wouldn't get out to most of his users. Talk about a control freak! Why does it take so much pressure to get just a few changes from this guy? Why is he so worried about messages asking to make his software more privacy concerned?

BECAUSE HE CAN'T CONTROL EVERYTHING WITHOUT HIS SPYWARE!

Here's another one I found:
Filename: home office@nude-***************[1].txt
Contents:
Apache
tuc125.dakotacom.net.65052985977479297
nude-***************.net/
0
3046415744
29407761
4290580608
29407552
*

So now we know where this guy has been, so he likes nude britney spears. But what if it was "gay-naked-guys-doing-it.net" ? And what if the IP was this guys work? Could he lose his job over this? YOU BET!!! (and don't think it doesn't happen, even in secret) I have a date code, IP and a DNS name for his port, what else do I need?

BEARSHARE IS SPYWARE!

I could go on and on, these files are all over the place!

This attitude of BearShare's author sucks and isn't going to change. The only way out is to stop using it and hope he goes away and gets a job somewhere that has nothing to do with the net.

You would think by now people would stop using closed source software like this when it comes to network connections. Your privacy is more important that you think.

Most people don't get it till something bad happens. People run firewalls to protect their computer, the firewall ain't working if you told it that BearShare is OK to transmit packets!

What if I could get your e-mail password? Could I send mail to your boss or lover/spouse and screw up your life? And why would some net kiddie not want to do this just as a "joke"? Thinking it was fun?

Yes, Vinnie will say he fixed this after a lot of pressure, but who knows if he just changed the keyword or encrypted it! He wants access to anything he can get, he wants to control everything he touches, he dreams of being a dictator! Control, control, control!

Run Open Source software only!

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! STOP THE BEAR!

(post this everywhere!)

Actually, that particular problem has nothing to do with BearShare; the same thing could happen with any peer-to-peer client. The problem is that some people are sharing their whole hard drive because they don't know any better. CNet wrote an article about this a few months ago at http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-4762138.html

Yes, but searching for other files that should be there doesn't turn up much. Granted, some people are screwing up, but there isn't enough of them to count for how many of these cookie files are out there.
Why is BearShare the only one returning most of these files? Are Limewire users smarter?
Besides, what does it take to get a simple warning when you try to share your main directory. It just goes to show you how much privacy means to this programmer.

What do you mean by "other files that should be there"?

You'd be surprised at how many people wouldn't know better than to share their main directory, and a single person could be sharing thousands of cookies.

Regardless, BearShare isn't sharing cookies by default. BearShare is probably the the one returning most of those files because more people use BearShare than LimeWire.

I just tried sharing my main directory in LimeWire and it didn't warn me either.

Cyclocide: Actually, no, it can't. Search for "Gnotella" or something and you don't get scores of personal information. Everybody knows that Bearscare has spyware. Mr. Millionaire was right. You really don't care about your privacy until you get busted because of the lack of it. Knowing the Bearscare thing, I don't see why anybody uses it. Well, I guess they don't care. They should, but that's not my business.
Mr. Watcher Person Whatever: If this was an original post, you've opened up some very important information, that no one knew about, save "Vinnie". I hope Bearscare gets sued for this. If it's not, well, this is a very popular forum, so you've alerted a lot of people.
Bearscare People: Why do you have spyware? Trick question, you put it there. But why did you put it there? Were you planning to get personal info from people, send them e-mailbombs (they do exist), blackmail them, and threaten their life? No??????? Then why?? You probably <b>will</B> get sued for this. I hope you have money for lawyers and court fees and payments. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!

Cyclocide, now do you see why I have to have the forums on BearShare.Net moderated?

This is getting ridiculous.

FYI, BearShare automatically shares any directory that you had set up in Napster, if Napster was installed.

Therefore, if you had MP3 files in your C:\Windows directory or underneath, and those directories were added to Napster's list of shares, then BearShare will pick it up and share those directories as well.

Since BearShare shares more than MP3, you might end up sharing cookies and the like.

Hold the pony! A new revelation from Mr. BearShare himself. BearShare checks other applications to see what files they are sharing! Since when did we give you permission to do that?

Without a doubt it is user-configurable, but can't you see how this is damaging when most newbie slime aren't presented with a dialog to set those configuration options BEFORE they start sharing?

BearShare is at most an ongoing beta project at what corporate-sponsored global network stupidity can do to you!

Hallo:

now, keep the guns secured, will you . This is well known, and also clearly visible under [setup] [shared].
I switched to another servent partly because the developer telled things mostly only after being pressed by users, but this Napster directory discussion is truly unimpurtant, I believe. No offence to you, anyway.

Greetings....

What did I just finish saying? Most newbie slime don't even open the setup; they just begin searching to their heart's content. And while they're searching for files, most of them don't even realize they're sharing files! This isn't just an issue with BearShare, but probably a lot of Gnutella servants out there. The authors need to stop forcing features onto users and keep a basic default of what they do and don't need.

Ok, agreed.
Surely these things are very difficult for newbies. Maybe it would be better to do things like this not on default.
Greetings....