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As the Internet became a commonplace part of most people’s lives, lives and industries began to dramatically shift. The digitization of most forms of media meant things that had only existed in hard copy could now be streamed and shared across oceans in mere minutes. The movie and music industries were two of the most impacted groups, with newspapers and magazines coming in right behind. The idea of sharing music and movies file, peer to peer sharing as it is commonly known, drastically changed the face of how people were introduced to and consumed their media.

Torrents are the most popular way people share music and movies across the wide swath that is the Internet. These types of files are uploaded and downloaded from the computers of hundreds if not thousands of users and sharers simultaneously. People in these file sharing communities open up their hard drives to users they have never, nor will likely ever, meet. There is a level of trust implicit in these types of exchanges: “We’re both doing something illegal so let’s not destroy each other.” However, many hackers and malicious coders use that level of trust to destroy the computers of innocent strangers.

There are a few ways that these bad guys take advantage of this kind of situation. They can simply have a “pirate” download a piece of malicious code that can either cause an innocent prank or crash your hard drive. They can also use the access they are getting to your computer, oftentimes people who want to upload are asked to open ports in their firewall to allow file sharing to occur, to steal personal or sensitive information. Some people find it hard to pity downloaders who are targeted because they are engaging in illegal activity. Whether you feel bad for them or not, by allowing these hackers to practice on their computers, society is only enabling them to get strong enough to attack any computer.