I need help.?

Question

Can you guys give me a 411 about bitTorrent? what is it? -the wiki explanation is a bit too advance for me-
What are the negative sides of downloading Torrent files (such as virus, hackers, etc)?
Is it available for macintosh? If it is, will Mac system face the same risk as PC system?
What is the advantages of having and using this program?

thanks so much..

Answer 1

Here goes..... my attempt at a simple answer. :-)

Let's say you want to download a program onto your computer. And you find a site that has the program you want. You have to wait for the entire program to download from that one site and if it's a large program, it could take a while.

But what if you had 10 sites with the same program and you could get each of those sites to download 1/10 of the program, all at the same time, and reassemble all 10 "pieces" to make the whole program. Download time would be reduced.

BitTorrent uses that concept. Everyone who uses BitTorrent is effectively "connected" to everyone else. So you have access to everyone else's computer to find things. Theoretically, it's a large file sharing system. But therein lies the problem. You cannot control what other people may have added to their files (viruses, trojans, adware, etc.) or how they might attempt to hack your computer. So it's absolutely important that you have up to date antivirus, antispyware, firewall, etc.

Is there a risk? Yes. Is it a big risk? Probably not, unless you're the one who's infected or gets hacked. BitTorrent is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Here's a link that might help. If you scroll to the bottom of the page to FAQ, you'll get some fairly easy to understand info. Hope this helps.

http://www.bittorrent.com/index.html

Answer 2

I don't trust torrents for some reason, probably cuz I really don't know how to use them.