What i use is CCleaner and set is to the NSA (7 passes) Secure Deletion. Which means that it deletes everything you want it to by first overwriting it with zeros seven times and then deletes it. Most secure way i can think of. Awesome program that i recommend anyone who has had this problem to get.:PEACE:

First let me state that I have a pre-excisting condition known as Paranoid Personality Disorder, therefore I am extremely paranoid about everything that goes on around me, nonetheless through therapy I have been able to lead a rather successful life, last year in my senior year in high school I was looking for some porn (adult) and came across a video that said hot redhead pthc, I did not know what this stood for so having a thing for redheads, i dowloaded it, but it wouldn't let me preview so I cancelled but didn't delete the partial until like two months later when I found out there even was a partial left, then I found out that I was sharing partials. Also just a month ago I was looking for some videos and downloaded like eight at the time none of the titles suggested internet porn to me, but I also did not know that hussyfan was also child porn, my computer downloaded this file extremely quick but since all the videos had similar names I did not watch it after it was dowloaded b/c I just went right by it. I went out of town that week and my roomate used my computer including limewire, he still hadn't purchased his. when i came back I chose this video and as soon as I realized that it was child porn I deleted it, but ever since I have become a mess, I scrub my harddrive daily, I get scared whenever I hear a cop car coming, I have resummed smoking, which I had given up a year prior, now I'm on two and a half packs a day, I need to take a couple of valium pills in order to sleep for three hours each night, I have already had two nervous breakdowns while I was by myself at home, I haven't been abel to have sex with my girlfriend in two weeks, I just keep imagining scenarios where the feds come to my house and take me for 5 years for pocession of cp. I tanked a midterm just yesterday. I have found that people in this forum appear to know their stuff and I am about as ignorant as there can be about technology, It was an accident i didn't mean to download cp, and i didn't notice i left it on my computer for a week,(neither did my roomate), but this brought up the fact that what if someone caught on the the partial left on my parents computer, that said pthc. I can't deal with this anymore, I'M ON THE EDGE OF SANITY, since i live on a third floor i have considered jumping off a couple of times. Sometimes I just wanna turn my self in to the cops and get it over with. What scares me the most is that I will spend next semester as a exchange student in University of Madrid and I will be away from my parents, and if somebody comes looking for them, because of my ignorance I won't be around to take the blame. Can somebody tell me if my paranoia has any basis whether the cops would spend their time in tracking somebody with a single file down, also if they would how long would it take for them to reach that person, from what I have seen in some cases it took about two months after the investigation began, in others it took 6 months but i really don't know. I am desperate please give me a quick response, what is left of my sanity hangs in the balance, and I need to know what's coming. Thank You
PS **** those child molestors, because of them me, an outstanding student a decent member of society, is reduced to a dependence on sleeping pills, and cigarettes to keep from going completely crazy or even worse killing my self. If I do get thrown in jail over this, I will do everything in my power when I get out to make sure those scumbags suffer a slow painful death.

hey
 

:xeri_ok1ani:don't look at that stuff you can go to jail just for looking at it.The FBI are hard on people that do that stuff so in other words stay fore from it okay.

I didn't want to look at that stuff. I just didn't know that pthc stood for preeteen harcore, I mean are we all suppossed to know the lingo of the pedophiles. I am still scared shitless, and I just feel that getting this of my chest will make it all better

Just a quick note to boston 1 about files that won't delete, I found that the best one around for doing this is DelinvFile - Utility for Deleting Invalid Files and Folders
Hasn't failed me yet !!
Newbee2
:D

Ok. First let me say that child porn is a horrible, terrible thing.

Now, the police will spend time trying to catch the people who upload these videos instead of the people viewing them for two reasons:
it stops it at the source,
and that is the easiest way to get a conviction.

Waterinthefuel. You are lying to the forum, either in that you never went to prison, or in the manor that you received child pornography and your actual intent. (or, perhaps, you had a very poor lawyer.) In order to download a file from a p2p network, you must allow people to connect to your IP (which can be secured with a little effort). However, that is very difficult to trace to one particular computer, especially in 2002. If you were searching for a file called "young" by that artist, found that it was not what you wanted,and you deleted the file, the evidence used in court can very well prove your story if the particular circulating file was in fact labeled (on the p2p site)"young, kenny chesney". That title would mean you could not possibly expect the contents to be illegal porn, thus proving lack on intent. (that and you deleted the file) Because you were convicted, the courts ruled that the file you downloaded from kazza was in fact labeled in a manor that you would know what you were receiving, since your IP address came off of that particular file extension (according to your story), which would include the file name.

In America, you are innocent until proven guilty. They convicted you because they had enough evidence against you. If you truly were innocent, you would have taken the necessary measures to prove this such as providing a link to the file you downloaded to the court with its title and actual content, or replacing your hard drive immediately after you received those files.

My theory is that you were convicted of a crime which permitted the police to search your home. They found the pornography on your hard drive, and convicted you of that in addition to your original sentence. Your feeble, uneducated argument, is that you did not know what you were receiving. Please, unless you provide full court records (with the full story), don't try to obtain pity from the forum.


to the young person viewing this material. My advice to you is find a girlfriend your age, or stick to legal pornography, (even though its illegal for you to view). Porn is dangerous, and can be emotionally addicting. It can destroy marriages, careers, and lives. While child pornography is normal to you now, when you grow older it may become a dangerous obsession.

i am also worried. I am 14, and like that other guy i am normal sh*t i have many freinds and like lots of ppl my age i look at porn. I use limewire every once in a while and i am shocked when i see that weird porn in the serch results, so last night i downloaded one of a 15 yr old and i then deleted it about 1 minute after it finished downloading i only downloaded it to see if it was real and im not sure it was. I also downlaoded one about a girl and a dog and it was real, so after that i googled wierd porn on google and found this thread i was not concerned but after seeing all these posts i am very concerned, so what is the chance that i willget caught over 1 file.

btw i used eraser and erased limewire and itunes, which is where the files are from. do i need to somehow get the actual files in the trash then do it or will deleting limewire also delete the files from limewire?

oh yeah,and what can they actually do to a 14 year old?

I am qualified to respond to these questions, but this will be my sole post. I will try to keep it short and sweet.

As for what they can do to minors, that varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Prosecution of minors is a very gray legal area. But, Just. Stay. Away. It's not worth it.

I did not read the entire thread, but some people on here were giving bad advice. Do. Not. Ever. turn in child porn to the Feds. If you discover child porn you need to let them know the location of it, but not actually give it to them. POSESSING CHILD PORN IS ILLEGAL. By all means, tell them where they can find it, but do not have a whiff of it on you. However, there are many volunteers who turn in locations of child pornography to the police - this is a very good and noble act. Just be really, really careful. People who have turned in tapes of child porn have been busted for posession...digital downloads are the same thing, legally. So point out, but do not touch. Pretend you found a gun on the side of the road. Sure, call the cops - but don't get your fingerprints or DNA on it.

Most, and I emphasize the word most, people get caught by sharing it. It's the same way with illegally obtained music. If you accidentally download child porn, the first thing you need to do is get it out of the shared folder. The second thing you should do is uninstall the file-sharing program (you can reinstall after this is all said and done). Then download an erasing program. Research it to make sure it is what it is. I recommend at least seven passes with a DoD overwriting algorithm. Good erasure programs will have a few options. ERASE the file in question - don't delete it. (Most erasure programs delete and erase at once.)

Once you've erased the file, then go clear all of your history, temporary internet files, cookies, and document history. Then reboot. Then you want to use the erasure program to overwrite ALL of the free space on your hard drives. I would suggest doing this a few times (with different algorithms) - just in case.

At this point you should be good to go. Running a defrag couldn't hurt either. Also make sure you have anti-spyware and anti-virus software up to date and run them weekly. (This should be done anyway.)

At this point, they'd need an electron microscope to get the data off your hard drive, which is way too expensive to use in prosecution for...well, for most things. Even then, them getting data is a maybe, at best.

If you really think the cops are coming and you've done all of this, then you could reformat your hard drive. If you KNOW that there is a warrant out for you (but have not been given an order to preserve data, which is rare), after the re-format you'll want to degausse the hard-drive using electromagnets. Then make the hard drive disappear. At that point you're 99.999999% sure that they won't be able to get anything.

However, sometimes corporations or government organizations are ordered not to destroy data. Obstruction of justice is a serious charge...the chances of that being applied for this reason in a single criminal case is low.

But, for all intents and purposes, clearing out your history and erasing the file, and then all of the free space on your hard drive is the best way to go. You can sleep well and still use your machine again.

However, the best way to do it is just be really selective on what you download. Do not do massive downloads and pay attention to things as they come in. If you catch something, you catch it right away, before it gets shared.

Anyway, be safe, don't search for it, and be moderately paranoid, and you should be ok!

adult websites have CP
 

These days i was shocked to find child porn on adult websites. When you search on google 'adult sex', it does have adult content but then there are many that also have under 18's. So if someone clicked on the link that says teens' on the adult website you would expect them to be 18/19 yrs old. So can you still be arrested for this mistake?

the odds are very low if it was an honest one time (or very infrequent) mistake

If that were illegal they'd never be able to sell swimsuits at clothing chains.

It's illegal to have sex photos and in many cases, sexualized (though how it is interpreted varies) photos, that's all.

I like other people here have accidentally downloaded child pornography by either clicking misnamed files or getting some unwanted files that were caught when I do mass downloads at one time. It is something you cannot avoid unless you begin to practice more cautious downloading. Unfortunately, law enforcement just doesn't have the resources to catch most pedophiles online... but they are trying. My advice to anyone using Limewire or any other p2p program is to watch your downloads like a hawk and always be patient when clicking on the files you want. Sometimes the search will jump right when you're about to click on something and you end up downloading a file you didn't want and many times won't catch it until you go to play it. Your chances of being brought against the law by accidental downloads is very very slim so don't freak out if it's happened to you. Like I said, law enforcement just doesn't have the resources. Like many people have said on here, the ones being looked at by law enforcement are the people sharing the content wether it is any form of pornography or just simple mp3s. But even then, if it was an accident, just delete or clean the files like people suggest and be more careful from then on. I personally set my share folder to a different folder than my incoming folder that way I can make sure I am not contributing to the problem.

Bottom line is, if you are downloading mp3s, just go buy the cd. If you are downloading porn, keep a very watchful eye on what you're doing. Always have your spyware and virus protection up to date because getting in trouble with the law isnt the only risk you take by using p2p programs, especially when getting porn.

I don't think you'd be immune to the risk by practicing cautious dwnloading. This is why, after learning about this risk, I don't download files off of limewire anymore. Mainly I just go on to browse what other people have. Honestly, if you take a screenshot of the file names that pop up when you type in some words, it shows the obvious implied content.

I don't really see why law enforcement goes after purposeful downloads either, it's data, go after the people making the stuff.

Limewire or old taxreturns
 

Best way of making sure no data is recovered.
1. take hard drive out of computer
2. Lay it on a flat hard surface
3. Take hammer and smash it into dust.
4. then dump into salt water.
5. dump it's pieces in different places.
That and only that will make sure it is never found on your computer.
Data recovery is so far ahead of the game that no program will delete it. Don't think for a moment it is. I don't care what you want to delete old pictures or tax returns Never give a hard drive away with the computer, never think that hard drive is dead and put in the trash, make sure take apart a burn the disk in. Now for flash memory it is in old cell phone or camera same hold true. It can be recovered.

That sounds an awful lot like superstition. Superspies from the NSA are not going to
step in on every little case and save the day. People who download a single file by
accident are never going to warrant the huge expense of an attempt, and such
attempts frequently fail if secure deletion software is used.

Besides, people who collect illegal porn apparently collect a lot of it and don't delete
it, so the point is effectively moot. The guys who get caught always have a lot of it,
so imaginary super-CSI wizardry isn't necessary.

its NOT imaginary d00d...not at all...

take the time to pull out a vinyl disc and notice how you can hear 'cross talk' before the tune begins....think about it...then think about how one could (and it IS done) pull data off of the ridges of the disc...yep...that is how it is done...

if you choose the believe otherwise, then do so...but you are wrong...

It's different on magnetic media. A secure delete routine throws enough noise at it to clean up
the edges too, which is why they run so many passes. What you're talking about is roughly
analogous to having never tried a secure wipe at all, which on vinyl would be like scraping out
the grooves so that even the crosstalk is gone.

At that point maybe Ensign Kim could recover something with a tricorder and some Borg
technology but probably not, since he's out of town and the Borg stuff is really expensive.http://www3.telus.net/Aaron_Walkhouse/tongue3.gif

uh huh...well that was a simile to direct you to a thought process that obviously went over (or perhaps under) your head....why do you think military spy planes have self destruct devices on their data recorders???? again, believe whatever you will, but you are wrong...

Hard drive data
 

For the people that do collect illegal porn. They need help. For the people that make it they need to be hung. I don't care what it is you have on your hard drive If you don't want to be seen, tax returns or pictures of your wife. The only sure way is to smash it into dust. I don't care what software you buy The FBI can undo it.

Once again I will repeat it. The Star Trek technology you are thinking about is far far too
expensive to be used on insignificantly small cases like somebody downloading something by
accident and immediately deleting it. There is no way in any circumstance that the most
expensive scanning tunnelling electron microscope technique is ever, under any circumstance,
going to be used on anything less than a national security matter, period, end of sentence.

If you're not spreading anthrax around D.C. or mailing a hard drive full of uranium enrichment
info to China, a military standard DOD 5220.22 secure wipe that most secure delete software
is capable of is more than sufficient to make it effectively impossible for the FBI to cope
with or afford.

They're still using AnaDisk, for crying out loud. Do you know how old that puppy is?

For the few that accidentally download something a simple delete followed by
defragging the drive is more than enough to put their minds at ease. To think
otherwise is to be superstitious and to tell people otherwise is sensationalism for
the sake of self entertainment. :p

Hi guys, iam glad to join this forum, but its for reasons that i never thought would happen to me. I need serious advice of what to do.

Iam a big fan of limewire, love the fact that i can download all my fav songs so i will always use it.
But last year when i discovered that you could download porn on limewire, some sickening images of child abuse came with it. I had highlighted the search results to save time looking through each individual file, i was about to have an empty house so i thought i would get prepared lol. Anyway after highlighting then pressing enter, all the highlighted porn files started downloading.
Good so far.
After ten minutes of scrolling the internet i returned to limewire, and was shocked and disgusted to find what i did. Quite a few pics had been downloaded with titles that suggested it was child porn. Straight away i felt instantly sick and a cold feeling filled my body. Quickly i stopped downloading everything, deleted all my dowloaded files and switched off the pc. I started to think the police would be at my door in a matter of minutes.

The next day i decided to go back on and make sure all of the filth was deleted from my limewire. I then discovered i could type in keywords to block such files, and thats what i did. I thought if i typed in words such as kid and child, the chance of it happening again would be nil, so thats what i did.
I continued to download porn from limewire, thinking that only Adult porn was being downloaded as i had blocked out files with the words kid and child in them. But this was not the case. A couple of times the filth had been downloaded again and as i did before, i deleted them as soon as i found them. This then prompted me to stop downloading all porn from limewire, which i perhaps should have done before. In the keywords box i typed in all sexually related words i could think of to make sure of this

Ever since then i have been living in fear that the police will be at my door soon. Iam 16 now, was 15 when it happened and as you can imagine i have been mentally exhausted by this. Everytime i see police in my street, i think they are here for me, and sometimes i actually wanted to approach them and inform them of what had happened, but i didnt have the balls. It has been my dream to work in the police since i was a little boy, and child porn is something that absolutely sickens me.

My question is what should i do? Iam leaving school, want to join the police soon as possible, but i just couldn't do it knowing that i haven't reported what i accidentally downloaded. Iam scared that if i do tell the police, they will instantly suspect me of being a sick pedophile b*****d, which is something that iam not. Also, still being at school, Iam terrified that if i did report it, people at school would label me as a pedo and i would have the **** kicked out of me. I have came close before to telling my mum, but again iam scared in case she wouldn't believe me, even though i know she probably would.

So how should i report this. if i was ever even suspected of being a pedo, i honestly would consider suicide, thats how worried and depressed iam.

Please give me advice guys.

The screwed up laws make it dangerous to report it, so better not.

Use an eraser to erase all free space on the harddrive, then defragment and do the same thing over again.

If you want porn then use other sources that are better kept control of. The Gnutella network isn't being monitored as to what can and can't be shared. If it was then it would fast be no porn, no movies, no music and no nothing.

Thanks for the advice. Thing is though its a family computer, so would they find out if i erased free space and defragged?
Also the filth that was downloaded wasn't shared, i have never shared any files. Does that make a difference?
I dream of a career of busting people like pedophiles in the police, so to think i could be labeled as one is driving me crazy.

my my my AW...first you state that "imaginary super-CSI wizardry isn't necessary" then you state "The Star Trek technology you are thinking about is far far too expensive"..make up your worthless mind d00d...I for one am sick and tired of your games and such...yep, it is expensive (in the fact that an agent has to be sent to a location and paid for his/her time) but it does exist....yet again I have to point out what a tool you are...

The facts are simple.

The hypothetical situation where professional grade data recovery available to
police defeats the military grade data erasing software available for free to the
public does not exist. Show us one instance where it did.

There's no point anyway because collectors of porn tend to amass large collections
instead of deleting it. Most arrests you see in the newspapers report "huge" collections.

In cases where encryption is used to hide porn, the police either get lucky or they
don't in decrypting the data. Data recovery is not an issue in those cases.

Extreme grades of data recovery are never employed in minor criminal cases.
It's too expensive and only available in matters as serious as murder or national
security. The fact that it takes extremely long times is also a deciding factor
against using it in criminal cases that have statutory time limitations.

None of these facts override or invalidate any other. They go together, adding up
to the simple fact that people who accidentally download something and delete it
right away are never going to be pounced upon by high-tech warriors with magical
abilities to conjure up deleted files and destroy lives. To suggest that such a thing
can happen is irresponsible sensationalism which does the P2P community no good. http://www3.telus.net/Aaron_Walkhouse/really.gif

Thank you!
 

Aaron,your comment made me feel better.
I am freaking out---I can't believe I accidentally half-way downloaded
(Cause I realized half way and stopped)
KP...I should read the titles very carefully next time.
I deleated the file, and as someone said in another post,
is using Eraser. I hope that is enough.
Worrying constantly about this issue has made me so tired,
and it happened just yesterday. I am so worried that the cops are going
to come any minute....

Anyone have an answer to that question?

hi group

Sometimes formatting has a bad sector check that overwrites all the sectors with a test pattern.
Even so, a pass over free space with a secure delete program would be a good idea to make sure.

Aaron, these are terrible stories I've read here. Last month I was downloading what I thought was a legal adult movie and when I previewed it halfway through I saw it was kp. Needless to say I deleted it but everything I've read here has me extremely scared and paranoid. I keep hearing the only way to truly rid something from your hd is to destroy the drive itself. I was in the market for a new computer anyway and from all I've read I'm tempted to just destroy this one and go ahead and get a new one. And thoughts would be appreciated.

A guy who accidentally halfway downloads something dodgy and then deletes the scraps is
certainly not guilty of anything. Since your disk is already active and full of data a defrag will be
enough to finish off the last bits of it.

Thanks for the quick response Aaron. I'm not the most computer savy person in the world, is a defrag the same thing as reformatting?

No. It's in the tools right beside the one to check the disk for errors. All it does is reassemble
scattered file sectors so each one is quick and easy to read or copy. They tend to get scattered a
bit in normal operations, and defragmenting them will restore disk performance.

A side benefit is that most or all of the empty sectors that might have held remnants of deleted
files are overwritten with other files during the defrag.

Aaron, in his self inflating importance, has again failed to give proper information on this subject....probably because he knows nothing about how things really work...

defragmentation will indeed speed up performance and overwrite some areas of your HDD...but not all...even if you defragment and then completely fill up your drive with data, there will still be possible areas where past data is accessible (even by free programs)...temp files, page files, etc....

about the only thing he has gotten right is that it is 'expensive' to truly retrieve data (and even getting that 'straight' answer was hard)....

for the truly worried I suggest totally wiping your HDD....nuke your HDD

Thank you peerless and Aaron for your input. I'll have to get around trying that nuke thing. This thing has had me so stressed out and sleepless recently. I feel like the only way to make sure things don't turn bad is to go to the authorities and tell them what happened, but I fear they won't believe me. Is there any way to anonymously ask for advice from the authorities on this matter?

I personally stay away from all filesharing, newsgroups, and any other unsafe house of porn. I don't know how many of the cases where people in this thread who got in trouble are actually an accident or they are just lieing to themselves, but I would not take the chance. Through a combination of the justice systems and general publics ignorance of technology and incredibly harsh laws for mere possession, and then with filesharing it becomes 'promotion' as well, it's simply to risky to go to those places for good ol' legal pornography.

This article should rightly scare the pants of you if you downloaded anything like that; these guys are in the worse possible position. It's impossible to tell who might be a victim of circumstance and who has a major problem with this kind of stuff because they lump them all together and call them 'vile, disgusting deviants'. Thanks to recent Florida law changes by politicians looking for easy targets, these guys are facing the same kind of sentences murderers face.

19 Arrested in Child Porn Bust | TheLedger.com

One of the accused-
'Mitchell Parker, 22, of Lakeland said he didn't do it.

"I'll say one thing, don't ever get Bearshare or Limewire," he said, denying that he ever downloaded the illegal material. "I am disgusted. I wish I was in a battery acid pool right now." '

Oh my god. Guys that article has me truly terrified, I fee like just crying. Should I just go to the authorities?

Sorry brother, did not mean to terrify you. That sheriff in the article is especially into that kind of crime, he's kinda creepy actually when you here him talk. If you just downloaded half of something and then deleted it I really don't think you have anything to worry about with most professional law enforcement. Despite what they could possibly get you for if your hard drive was not clean, they would see the incident as a very non-intentional one based on that. And the fact is that if you have not had anyone knock on your door yet, very slim chance that you are ever going to. Real federal law enforcement is going to be looking for regular activity and then move in directly after a download or an exchange of some kind so they know they have current, real evidence; not to waste their time with an old half-event like yours. They want to catch people who are actually doing something wrong. Follow the good advice presented to you here, please stay clear of dangerous activity but please have peace of mind also my friend. You are going to be fine. :Smilywais:

As I posted this morning ( The post was deleted by mistake, right? :rolleyes: ),
There's no point in contacting the authorities now because you have no evidence to
offer them and they cannot do anything. In fact, since you deleted it they just
might decide to seize your computer anyway just to cover their own sorry asses.

P2P is not a good source for tips anyway. The police pretty much have to patrol P2P
directly because then they can save evidence [such as IP addresses plus hash plus
exact time all together] as they find them and can then get warrants right away.
Working from a tip, they would have no choice but to go to the P2P network and
retrace your steps in hopes that they may find the bad file again. Since a tip is just
hearsay, they cannot go directly to a warrant and the chaotic nature of gnutella
means they might not be able to find it even if your tip is detailed and accurate.

As for wiping away traces of that one you almost downloaded, a defrag will be
good enough because your disk is already carrying a lot of data and defragmenting
is likely to wipe all the free sectors which once held the recently deleted file. You
should also be able to wipe free space with that nuker program, if it's anything like
the other good erasers you can get for free. That should be much more than
enough security for you.

Well, today I called the national center for missing and exploited children and asked them for advice. All they said was to file a report with them, either anonymously or with my information. I felt a little less than satisfied with their response so I called my local police station and they told me to call back tomorrow when a detective who works specifically in these matters is in. What I told the NCFMAEC and what I'll tell the detective on the phone tomorrow is what I am most afraid of was that if that file was part of some sting operation like in that article, I doubt they'd believe me and would just throw me into a general category.

Great answer!!

Skribz 396.
What are you trying to do martyr yourself,talk about overreaction! you have been given all the advice that you need to clean up your mistake,and to be at peace.
If you continue pushing this,then I believe that you must have underlying issues,or motives that need resolving.
N2

@AW: Please forget about defragging. Now.

Ever heard about disk forensics? They cut open your disk in a clean room and check the bits one at a time, and they can recover drives run over by cars for anything between 400€ and a few thousand Euro.

The only way to be halfway sure that unencrypted data can't be recovered is to use some data burning tools (they overwrite the data with random bits _multiple times_), and even that isn't safe, because harddisks optimize a bit too eagerly these times and might just point the data burn tools to different bits even though they say that they write to the same ones.

The way to be mostly safe is to create an encrypted partition/section on your drive and save the data into it.

If you then want to delete it, you just have to delete and overwrite the encrypted partition, because encrypted files can't be recovered from remaining shreds, while for unencrypted files small shreds suffice to show which fiels where there.

Be vary of incomplete files, though. They must go into the encrypted partition, too.

And make sure you read up on the encryption algorythm you use. If it encrypts in smaller parts, then you must make sure that every part is getting shredded.

And while I'm at it: You shouldn't download copyright infringing files in the first place. And even less in unencrypted networks. They just need to bust the one you downloaded _from_ to get enough evidence against you.

Falsely Branded A Paedophile
 

People

Much more important than accidentally downloading a few dodgy files is having your identity and credit card details stolen and used for criminal activities.

I came across this story today on the BBC website whereby this man had his life almost destroyed because an online site that he used to buy goods from was not as secure as it should have been.

Falsely Branded A Paedophile

Therefore, those of you out there that are worrying yourselves into heart attacks and/or mental breakdowns should consider how secure is your computer and, above all, how secure are the online stores you use.



(Back for this post only) UK Bob

Sorry that I saw this only now: The police can and will come straight to your door.

Why should they try to download from you, when they can just retrace your IP address to you and grab your computer?

Your computer holds far better evidence of your downloads than any of their searches could show.

The only reasons why they shouldn't do this, are because the police people involved might think you a small fish just like their own children, downloading some music off the net and still buying CDs of their favourite artists.

And because they don't have unlimited resources, and have far better ways to spend their time than trying to catch music pirates. For example catching murderers, drug dealers and similar.

that one slipped by me...

NO...

reformatting does not write data to every sector, rather sets up a filesystem that the OS is able to see and sets all areas of the disc as being writable (i.e. as if there is no data whatsoever on the HDD, which for a reformat there's still plenty of organized 0's and 1's)...like the ancient, 4GB limited fat32, and the modern NTFS formats....

using the previously linked to Darin's Boot and Nuke program will overwrite the whole disc so that one can start over again cleanly...as cleanly as using a shiny fresh out of the box HDD...said drive might not last as long as a brand spanking new one (though with recent rumblings in the tech community this is very arguable), but it will be as clean as one!

and this information should really be applied anytime a user needs a new, clean start....'things' can reside on a HDD forever if not actively overwritten, and even then if its a real nasty bugger it will just move out of the way, as it were, as the writing heads approach it!

Yeah, there are parts of the files that are left on the HD, and therefore are recoverable. That's like file recovery progs work. Only if you use a shredder, you are shure about having no traces left on you HD (If you use a good one).

Lime wire porn
 

I did some research about "9 year old porn" limewire does not contain this but has some files named it.. it is trying to get peoples attention which is sick and wrong... a file is stuck on my computer now lolz... anyway ive deleted all the rest.. which were nothing. I think that police need to look into this wrong pornography !

hmm...I doubt it. I still think any computer can be traced if worse came to worse so still be careful but highly doubt the police will even consider it. It happens!