My husband and I have the standard limewire version. He uses this to download music only, neither one of us have ever viewed movies or searched for any type of movie. Last night he noticed that a pronographic movie title appeared in the downloading section. It was searching for more sources so I do not think it downloaded and it also appeared in incomplete file section. How is this possilbe when neither one of us requested this?

Thank you,
Utterly Confused

Hi Scomelc

First of all, I will to try not to unduly alarm you but it is possible for someone to put a file into your "Incomplete" folder without you knowing.

A few months ago I found a LW.exe. (the LW install file) in my incomplete folder and made enquires via this forum. Through dogged persistence forum members found out that the LW Org. was using our internet bandwidth to distribute LW without asking us, which is like someone using your electricity without asking your permission.

Therefore, as said before, it is possible for someone with the knowledge and equipment to put something onto your PC without you knowing about it, especially if your have very little or no protective software, e.g. firewall, anti-virus, anti-secret installation, fly-by suppression, etc.

The internet, and the gnutella network, is an extremely dangerous place filled with booby-traps, viruses and all manner of malware designed mainly to convert your PC into part of a criminal enterprise, steal your financial data or con you out of your money, either way you owe it to yourself and your family to protect your PC as best you can.



UK Bob

We have downloaded a couple of the free firewalls from the internet, off the top of my head I am not real sure of the exact ones. After we noticed this we did run a scan and it detected 30 something virus could this have been one? My husband has used LW for a long time and he said that he had never seen a pornographic movie appear in the downloading section and the only way it could have appear is if we searched for it, which neither one of us have searched for any type of videos.

Hi again Scomelc

From what you have written it is clear that your PC had no protection and so was at the mercy of any (international) criminal gang, hacker or miscreant on the Internet. However, you have cleaned the viruses off your system and installed a firewall, just make sure that you configure your firewall for maximum protection.

As for planting porn on your PC, if you had asked me that question a month ago I would have said it was possible but not probable. But now I would say that any poorly or unprotected PC is capable of being used to plant on and/or distribute pornographic material.

Finally, a year or so ago I read that criminal gangs, mainly out of Russia, were blackmailing some PC owners, saying that unless they pay a sum of money to a certain account they will plant "illegal porn" on their PCs and then tell the police.

The story went on to say that some people paid up, at the time I did not take this story too seriously but now I know that it is not only possible but more likely to happen now than any other time in the past.



UK Bob