P2P networks face threat from dubious advertisers

To an increasing extent dubious advertising agencies such as MediaDefender and Peermatrix use p2p search results to serve ads to downloaders. By inserting fake search results these advertisers fool downloaders into downloading ads. The latest of these dubious offerings is PeerMatrix. According to their press statement, PeerMatrix has released a revolutionary technology that morphs the name of an ad file to match whatever a P2P user is searching for, thereby dramatically increasing the probability that an ad file will be downloaded and viewed.

While these ads can be a nuisance to downloaders, there is a significantly greater threat: that of malware. Because the advertisers also offer the opportunity to insert executables into the fake search results, there is an  unparalled opportunity for malware distribution.

Meanwhile, P2P providers are not amused. Fake search results are becoming a serious problem for the reliability of p2p platforms such as Limewire, Gnutella and eD2k. P2p providers are scrambling to address the issue. For instance, Angel Leon, lead developer at FrostWire, told TorrentFreak that it is in the interest of the community to remove fake results from Frostwire. However, this brings p2p providers in an akward position. In the past most of them have claimed that they to have no direct control over their systems. This position insulated them from claims by the content industry. Now that they are working on methods to control search results, in a sense they acknowledge that they have the ability to control the content that flows through their system, making them vulnerable to claims by the content industry.

It remains to be seen how the p2p providers will deal with this dillemma. In the mean time downloaders should be very weary of what they download.