Www.mp3downloading.com ? riaa front?

vbimport
#1

A friend joined up with mp3downloading.com ( see the large number of adds they have been running ) and paid the 60+ USD for access to their p2p network.
He got a copy of etomi ( sharezilla re labeled it looks like ) and a program called mp3 guard ( p2pidshield renamed ) whihc included a nice trojan which logs all files on the pc and xmls them to a remote ip.
A quick internet check atributes this nasty to the riaa.
These guys are charging for free software and saying they offer a fully legal music download service - however their legal disclaimer states any downloaded copyright matterial is totally your problem and is beyond their responsibility.

Anyone know anything else about these guys?

#2

“whihc included a nice trojan which logs all files on the pc and xmls them to a remote ip”. For a beginner, what does this mean? Is the trojan harmful, or will it slow down your computer?

Are you able to remove it with some software? And, how did you find the trojan in the software?

Thanks.

#3

Dont trust ANY sites that say “download 100% legal music” they are all scams. Use Nasper or iTunes.

\\VH////
:slight_smile:

#4

pc-cillian picked it up as did spybot.
NO I had to boot to dos and remove the files from there.
lucky it was a fresh machine in the end.
:a
Yeah trouble is we can’t use itunes, napster or similar here. No DMRC - but also no legal downloading. Go figure.

#5
#6

Scam! Oh my! I’m one of the suckeres that got taken in by the Etomi and p2pidshield scam. Anyone know how to remove it for sure? I’ve got utilities I can bootup and manually remove if I need to. Where is the p2pshield installed? I’ve had it running for just under 2 weeks now. Lots of old TV programs in my shared directory. Any word what the RIAA does with this stuff?

#7

I used pest patrol - dont ask. It is a great program. to expensive though.
It cleaned it out and then trend finished off the 3 -5 extra instances it put round the place. All the usualls precache and places like that.
It collects a list of all “controlled” matterial on your machine, and any network shares it can get to, then creates an xml file and sends it to an ip for collection.
What do they do with it? you guess is as good as mine. Currently this sort of thing is illegal in my country and I could sue them for doing it, but eh whats the point.
To all consider this a warning. They are getting smarter.

#8

where can i download mp3 albums for free can anybody help

#9

YOU CAN’T.

#10

Oh and avoid thedownloadplace.com as well. One of my mates installed the stuff and I ended up having to clean his system in DOS, which is a pain in the rear end.

#11

Don’t use either of those.

Napster wants you to stay subscribed to their service forever because when you cancel, it kills your music.
Itunes is just a tool by Apple to lock you in to their own proprietary music format which nobody else uses, so when you eventually buy an MP3 player to play their music on, you’re forced to buy an iPod.

Do what gives you the most freedom - buy audio-CD’s from your local shop.

#12

After I saw your post it kinda’ freaked me out. I’m a newbie ot all this stuff with filesharing, P2P etc. I completely uninstalled Etomi and the Mp3Shield. Turned out to be a program called “p3pidsec.exe” not p2pshield or MP3shield. Is that the same as the program you’re talking about?

I run a McAfee fire wall and virus sw. However, if you punch a hole in your fw to share… all bets are off aren’t they? I get McAfee notices about “supicious scripts” occasionally (normally my own). Normally, I hose one’s I don’t know.

I’ve run various sypware sw like “spyware blaster” and hosed as much as I could. If I may ask, are you in Europe or the US? I’m in the USA.

#13

I’m in another country. not us or eu. Thus any company ofereing legal downloads is lying because our govenment doesn’t currently have any laws allowing or blocking them. NIce time to be here really :slight_smile:
Yeah Tuza that sounds like them. the app is shield but the exe is named something else. The real app is good, this one is very bad.
Yes most of the tech queries on the mp3downloading.com page are from people who have closed the ports the nasty was using and it turns off sharing to spite you.
try s&D spybot, but basically I only found this crap after using trend.com free virus scanner and doing some port scanning with another machine.

#14

I don’t know why people mess around with P2P and
junk web sites that sell you nothing but grief.

Haven’t you ever heard of Usenet?

http://www.smr-usenet.com/tech/index.shtml

#15

Is what you describe illegal in the USA? That’s not a trick question, I’d like to know.

I went home tonight and looked at the files I got with “Etomi” and the “MP3Guard”. I got suckered up to by eyeballs! It turns out that the MP3Guard IS “P2P Identity Secure 2.5” they were SELLING for $19.95 US. I snorkled around the web and found the same file on several free shareware DL sites such as ZDNet. The downloaded (uninstalled) file FROM both sites including ZDnet is named “p2psecure.exe”. I reinstalled both on a non connected machine. It turns out the INSTALLED files for BOTH are absolutely identical down to the size and date, versions and look EXACTLY the same when running. I’m wondering if the “P2P Identity Secure 2.5” is the same file you mentioned in your first post that had a “trojan”. When the little app runs it shows “P2PIdSec” in the title bar and little 0’s stream across the tiny little dialog. Does this sound familiar? I opened every supicious XML file on my computer and saw nothing supicious but am running adware and spybot to name a few.

I feel like an idiot for not looking at the site name more closely before I signed up (late at night). It was “http://www.ultimatemoviedownload.com/”. That should have told me something from the start. Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! It turns out this site is a TOTAL SCAM and a complete rip-off. Google got a zillion hits about this site. They SELL Etomi and “MP3Guard” which turns out to be the “P2P Identity Secure” freeware. Oh my! They won’t respond to emails. I guess I can chalk this up to experience. But, I have this nagging feeling I may have installed a “trojan” like you mentioned. I wonder if they do work for the RIAA… Maybe they’re just a bunch of con artists.

#16

sounds like exactly the same thing. Sorry but yeah you got taken.
Common mistake to make is assuming the add programs will find viruses and the like- they won’t.
try www.trend.com and use the free online scaner. there are a few other online anti virus scanners but thats one I like.

#17

http://www.ewido.net/en/ stick with free version for the trial, if you like it and want the memory scanner, pay for it. You can use it to scan even after the trial is over. Gets rid of trojans, scumware, very effective.

#18

i think i spelled amazon right, they allow you to listen to about 30 seconds or so of each track of most of there albums, and offer alot of hard to find stuff.

thats one way to listen to albums or free, but its only for 30 seconds or less, plus its nice because you can actually see if that one song you cant find anywhere really is the song you want, it saved me a fortune, well about $80’s over the past two years, when i thought i knew the name of a song i liked but turned out to be something differnet.

#19

Don’t trust anyone who gives bad advice. There are many places you can download “100% legal music”:

Internet Archive: Live Music Archive
Bit torrents at ettree
Furthur Network
Live Grateful Dead

Here are a few resources to find millions of free songs for download. Yes, free and legal:

One Million Free & Legal Music
Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads

…

#20

OMG OMG…I am SOOO PISSED OFF. This crappy mp3downloading.com is a complete scam as you guys have said. I wanted to download a tv show, and from the way it sounded, I thought that this show kept a database of tv shows that you could download from. So I paid 60 bucks for a lifetime membership and some gay mp3 crap and realized as soon as I logged in and downloaded the software that I had been jipped.

So what did I do about it. Well let me share with you. I called the company and bitched for 45 minutes until finally I got them to refer me to a supervisor. They told me that I would have to hold for 3 hours to get a supervisor on the phone. I said fine, I’ll wait, I am only running up your 800 number bill!! So 30 seconds later, they claimed I had gotten a full refund. We’ll see if it ever shows up on the credit card statement.

Quick question for the board…If they don’t process the refund as they said they would at the end of the call, can I contact my credit card company and explain my situation. Would they be able to do anything.??