Privacy In Peer-to-Peer Networks

A big part of Internet traffic is nowadays peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic. Various peer-to-peer softwares have millions of users, sharing data by means of decentralized network. Wellknown examples of such programs are Kazaa [1], Gnutella [2], and eDonkey [3], which allow their users to search and share their files within the P2P community. The Internet telephony system, VoIP, is an another interesting and widely used P2P application. This paper discusses the privacy aspect of today’s P2P networks and the information that can be collected from the users of P2P software. The importance of the collected information and possible ways to use it are also discussed. The main focus is on currently available file-sharing applications and analysis of how they handle sensitive information.