I have had a couple of kids staying with me, and the delights downloaded a pack of stuff. I have had to get rid of a load of spyware. Anyway .. I noticed I have P2P Networking in my control settings. Now, I understand that it is Peer to Peer networking, but I cant work out what it is there for. I dont recall needing to download it .. is it used for IRC? or anything else in particular? Is it a security risk? and can I delete it? :D Thanks in advance. Cate

Cate, It's one of the two software components installed when you install Kazaa. I think Peer Points Manager is the other one. It is safe to delete it if you no longer have Kazaa installed on your machine.

Comment: There is something you should know. As a start please read: http://news.com.com/2100-1027-1020876.html (There are more recent articles on this issue but this is a good one to start with.) And if you have any music on your computer (do a search for any file with a .mp3, .mp2, .wma extension) then remove if it's in any type of file share folder (be careful not to remove any system mp3, mp2, wma files if such exist?). If you are further interested in what's happening with this issue, watch Tech TV tonight (9/12/03) at 8PM EST. The show, Music Wars. Feeling paranoid? Go to: http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/riaasubpoenas/ More info at www.riaa.com, www.boycott-riaa.com and www.cnet.com. This post is not intended for political discussion nor intended to be offensive in anyway due to links mentioned above. It is intended for informational purposes only.

"This post is not intended for political discussion nor intended to be offensive in anyway due to links mentioned above. It is intended for informational purposes only." I hope this forum doesn't come to where we need tags like that. Anyway, IRC is not P2P. P2P is simply direct connection to another client, thereby making the server more of an initial contact point. Once you connect to the server, you are given reference to another client, and thus the load of traffic is more evenly distributed, rather then crowded at the server. You can delete the P2P icon. Yes it is a security risk. Basically, most P2P programs leave you by default open to sharing files on your computer (Kazaa is an infamous example). To compound this problem, such programs as Kazaa are infamous for spyware. Go to your installed programs window and see if there is anything there you don't like. "Feeling paranoid?" Bop is paranoid. Just get rid of any Kazaa-like program and you should be fine. Next time, make a limited account for the kids. They will not be able to install things with this restriction.