What Can You Tell Me About 'Limewire'?

DH and I just gave our daughter a laptop for college. Her first goal is to download Limewire so she can "get all the free music she wants!" A friend of hers uses Limewire and apparently hasn't had any problems. My best friend and her DH, however, swear their pc crashed because of Limewire (which their daughter installed without their knowledge). Apparently they began getting pop-ups constantly, including porn images. They were running Norton antivirus at the time. They finally took their pc to a repair shop, had the hard drive wiped clean and the programming re-installed. The pop-ups started all over again, and even the computer tech couldn't get rid of the problem. He's the one that blamed it on Limewire.
Anyone here use that site, have any problems, know of any other free download sites that might be more secure, etc.?

I have Limewire and have not had any issues... however, that being said, I do have friends that have had problems with viruses being dl'ed along with the song they wanted. They were using Norton at the time as well. I do not use Norton because Norton and McAffee are horrible, IMO, I use AVG for my antivirus and have had absolutely no problems (and it's free!).

I use Limewire, as does my roommate.

As with anything you use to download things, you need to be careful with what you download, else you may get viruses and such. No site is more secure than any other, really, bad people put stuff everywhere.

Run an anti-virus often, as well as spyware and adware removal. I like antivir or AVG (free anti-viruses) and spybot and adaware.

I use Limewire all of the time, I also run Norton. I have had no issues. My daughter also runs limewire and Norton on her computor. as does my neighbour none of us have had any problems.

I don't know anything about Limewire. Recording Industry Association of America has taken several thousand file sharers in the USA to court for illegally sharing music through programs such as Limewire.

Limewire is heavily watched by the RIAA and MPAA, as well as several labels (Sony for one example). If your daughter wants to get herself caught - tell her go ahead, but you're not paying for any mistakes she makes. She'll find out something else too, universities really torque down what is going through their connection - p2p's get slowed down because a) they're typically used for illegal purposes and b) they use a lot of bandwidth. Even some ISP do this or block commonly used ports these programs use.

There's other options and ways to protect yourself, I won't list them in this post though. And if she doesn't know better then she probably shouldn't be risking her computer or a lawsuit by downloading anything.

I won't use Limewire or any other pirating program as 99 cents for a song is not much and it's illegal downloads hurt the musicians and the rest of the industry. I firmly believe in upholding music copyright and instilling that moral in the younger generation. Just my opinion though.

You know, for some reason it hadn't occurred to me that downloading thru Limewire was second-hand theft (for lack of a better term). I think DH and I had better sit her down and have a talk with our DD.
She isn't really as computer savvy as most kids her age seem to be, and will click on anything that might pop onto her monitor without bothering to find out what it is.
Thanks for the advice.

Yeah, it's not a safe program, and none of them are. The pay per downloads are definitely safe and legit. You can set monthly limits and everything.

She'll probably try to do it anyway so you'll want to set consequences. Better to let her friends get in trouble for downloading and then giving it to her than herself ya know?

Originally Posted by Renovia

The pay per downloads are definitely safe and legit.

Click to expand...

Not all of them are. And take Yahoo for example, the store closes and all that DRM'ed music you've paid for is useless. The work around being burning those low quality mp3s to cdr, ripping, and reencoding to a lossy format again...
Lesson - be careful where you spend your money and don't get DRM music.

If she will be on a school connection have her look up what it provides. Some have hubs set up for students to listen to music from. There are also some sites that allow, for free or for a small fee, unlimited streaming of full albums.

I just got a used computer from a neighbor and have been going through the process of cleaning it out without resorting to wiping the drive and starting back from scratch. Limewire and Norton were two of the first thing to go. Limewire because I just didn't need it, I did not trust it at all, and it is theft to download the songs, however secondhand (says the lady with XP on her computer she did not pay for. Hey, I didn't put it on here! But thats another story, lol) And Norton because from past experience with it, it sucks. It is a very intrusive big fat nasty program IMO, and I have never had anything but trouble with it. Did have to do a complete wipe of a different computer, Norton messed it up so bad. Its also worse to try to get rid of than the viruses it is supposed to protect you from, still finding bits and pieces of it on here, many many many hours of work on this later. I would more point the finger of blame at that, but if the drive was wiped and restored? Unless Norton was also restored along with it? Nasty bit of business, and again just my opinion.

I don't use Limewire for the simple reason that it's illegal downloading.

yes, you can't just go to any old site and pay for downloading and have it be safe and legit. I'm talking about 'established' sites.

But even established is a problem - which was my point. Amazon does offer a DMR free music service though, and if I'm not mistaken I believe their songs are .89 cents instead of .99.

ok, well let me specify even more - ITUNES.

I use the Pro version of Limewire. In other words I paid for my downloads. That makes it the same as I tunes or any other programs except I only had the fee once instead of everytime I download.

As for your friends computer if the tech wiped the hard drive (i.e erased everything on it) and started from scratch he should not be getting pop ups from Limewire. Wiping the hard drive basically gives you a new drive. We wipe ours out a few times a year with no issues.

There are a few precautions when using Limewire. And that is basically looking at the info and being able to tell what more than likely is a virus or not. Example Song title, bit rate and time only probably a virus. Artist, song title, bit rate, time, album, year, ets all listed with the song....probably not a virus.

One thing I recommend if you plan to use any download music site (I Tunes, Rhapsdy, Limewire etc) or plan to have a lot of pictures or downloaded stuff. And that is a Master/Slave drive. What you have is 2 hard drives in the computer Master being the bigger one for your everyday stuff. Slave being the smaller one to put your pictures and what not in. Its easy to drag and drop things via start menu, computer, you see the 2 drives, open the small one, drag from desk top, to the open window, done.

Paying for Limewire Pro does not mean you are legally downloading songs, the money goes to Limewire not to the artists or their record company.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_downloa...legal_or_legal

^ That's what I thought too. What does paying do? Let one jump queues or something?

As for two hard drives. Your master drive will be where your OS is installed. While it's always best to let Windows have it's own partition, it's also a good idea not to have a lot of downloading (heavy use) on the same HD. They do wear out and it's a lot easier to deal with if your slave drive suddenly decides to kick the bucket.