Ok before you all panic no the police didnt come to see me to tell me off, they infact came to my place of work (a well known Computer shop in basingstoke) and ask me if i could help them gain access to a computer which I had built and sold to a member of the public some time last year.

I of course being the nice chap that I am told them that it would cost them £60 + vat per hour and I would then be happy to assist them.

The police man explaind that a teen age girl had run away from home and that they need access in a hurry because they wanted to know if she had left them any clues on the computer.

they agreed that i would wave my fee in this case and I went about getting them access to the infomation on the PC.

much to my suprise (not) there were several file sharing programs on this pc, and taking a quick look arround (just to check id done the job correctly) I found that this pc had been used to down load many 100's of MP's and several DVD movies.

attached to some of these files were several viruses and much to the horror of this girl's mother and father there were lots of chat logs and records of all sorts of material that you would not like parents to find out.

Now I also demonstrated to the police how I can trace where things came from and are going to useing P2P software and printed out all the ghat logs etc so they could read them.

Now im not say that any one here will be running away from home but it made me think about how much information people have stored away on there computers that they think is safe and or information on other people with out you even knowing...

If you use any software like winmx or kazzaaa and you dont want people spying on you then I advise you to remove it.

Im sure in this case FACT will not be told about the movies and MP3's but it only takes a turn of bad luck and the boys in blue could be reading through your most personal stuff on your pc and takeing you to court in no time.

( I am currently formating my hard drive )

Be warned and enjoy

I've done some research on some of the facts made, here are some of them relating to Marc's post - just to prevent elements of scaremongering from creeping into posts.

(1) Copyright infringement is not a police matter, occasionally the offence is not even a criminal one, it is a cival one brought to court by the recording industry or the copyright holder. The police only accompany the authority to ensure that the warrant is served correctly and that you don't attack the person serving the warrant.

(2) If you don't use P2P then you've nothing to fear

(3) P2P software is riddled with spyware, which not only slows down your computer and internet connection, but spy's on your surfing interests and uploads then to 'head office' so they can target even more pop ups and junk mail to you.

(4) Formatting does nothing to defeat forensic hard drive examination. The only sure fire way of destroying a hard drive is to take a hammer to it.

(5) Don't sell your 2nd hand hard drives on, all of your personal info and old credit card purchases may still be on it. One of the biggest methods of identity theft is through people buying old hard drives and using the information on them for their own gain. If you sell your old pc on, then remove and destroy the hard drive before sale.

Marc's topic also highlights the reason behind one of the forum rules, namely as to why we don't allow under 16's to publish or pass on their contact details. More and more young people are disappearing as a result of meeting people whom they meet on the internet. I'm not saying that this is what has happened to the youngster who Marc mentioned, but obviously the police believe that there is that possibility hence the PC was being examined. Once again, I advise all young people NEVER to give out any personal information on forums, chat rooms, MSN etc and be suspicious of anybody who keeps asking you for that sort of info. Just because the person may say that they are the same age as you doesn't mean that they actually are.



But perhaps the best advice and the fact that Marc was trying to get across is to legally obtain your music in the first place.

was kidding about formating my drive, chris is right just doing a format will not destroy the data, for this you have to over write every track and sector of the disc with new information or bash the living day light out of it with a hammer untill you cant tell what it used to be.

point being is that this little episod made me think about how much of your personal information is trusted to a computer and who has access to this information...

Big brother is watching you

Yeah, I agree - just go to legal download sites or buy the CD/tape/reel-to-reel













Betamax?