Help for Mx Users - Getting Around the Fake File Flooding

[CoalDust]

WinMx Help Guide

This guide was put together to help all of you avoid being driven from this network by the "Bully Boy " tactics of the Riaa/Mpaa and the companies that pay them .
Please follow theses useful steps to make sure that your getting the most out of WinMx.

(1) The first thing you should do is join a room, which ever one takes your fancy. This will help make the network strong and also get a network in place for when we need to act in a concerted manner.
Another benefit of this, is the source of uncorrupted files, that are held by fellow room members.

(2) Install Peer Guardian and make sure it is active when your using WinMx. This will ensure that you cannot connect to many of the flooders, the Peer Guardian list is updated very regularly, so don't think that it's not worth your time. Get it here
http://www.methlabs.org/PeerGuardian_v1.99_pr14.zip
(Update 09-19-05) New Peer guardian2 Link.
http://peerguardian.sourceforge.net/pg2.html

(3) Use one of the many "How to"s to connect to Open Nap, this is always a source of good, non fake files, and trust me it really is easy, as it's already built into WinMx.
http://www.vladd44.com/mx/opennap.php
http://forums.cricketmx.com/viewtopic.php?t=599

(4) Have a "Browse" of the person you wish to download from, BEFORE starting any download or "Whois" them, most of the fakers are sharing 3OOO files and have stupidly large amounts of slots open.
Don't waste your time on these people, a simple check like this will save you much time and annoyance, as well as reducing the load they place on the network. See here for an example of a fake set of files


(Update 25-02 05 ) A simple way to help spot the fake sharers is to click on the Users tab in search as this will show all the users sharing the same file names multiple times . (Thanks Vittijr , nice tip)
Also from the tips dept is this great pic and tip from Faceby88. Look at the parts on the pic below and see how the good files have active users qued, the fakes have no such users. (Thanx Faceby88 )



(5) Right click on your download as your getting it, and select Play , this will allow you to confirm it's the correct file.

(Update 02-25-05) Also, if it's a video file use Vlc player to preview the file as it's downloading, get it from here
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ (Thanx Snyper )
If you're downloading an ALBW file you can view the contents of the file by trying to unwrap it after a few % of the download
(Thanx Gypsy Blue )

(6) When you obtain a copy of any heavily faked file, remember to share it so others like yourself, can aviod having to waste time sorting real from fake. (Please resist the urge to write "Real" or "Not Fake" in the file name, as the flooders do this too).

(7) If you are experiencing difficulty with your connection please be aware that a patch exists for Secondary network users. This will help filter out a small problem that can cause you to be disconnected and limiting your room list, get it here.
http://www.kingmacro.net/kingmacro/?section=mx
Look for the "WinMx Patch", this will go into your C:\Program files\Winmx\ folder and should be called olepro32.dll (believe it or not, people have tried to put zip files in there and then said it's not working ) . Restart your WinMx and it will begin it's operation without you noticing a thing.

(8 ) Some People have reported that changing the "Preferred Peer Cache" setting to one of the other 5 servers, used to connect you to the network, can be beneficial in obtaining a room listing.
This also, is found in WinMx Settings, under "WinMx Peer Network", as usual a restart will make this option start operation.

(9) ISP blocking. This is a new phenomenon to WinMx also, but the normal ways to counter such problems are to change ports to ones not used by WinMx, (6699 tcp, and 6257 udp), not using those ports will give you a good chance to avoid the filtering system they use.
Your ports can be changed by going into WinMx Settings up top and looking for "Incoming Tcp", and "In/Out Udp Packets". I can't give you much in the way of guidance on what you should use, because the more varied the ports we all use, the harder it is to shut down our network ( pick a number between 0 and 65535) . In most cases I suggest going to lower numbers that are used by things such as webmail, msn, web pages , and many other services that it would be wise for the ISP not to block.
Once you have changed the ports restart WinMx for the change to take effect.

(10) Do Not under any circumstances use WinMx to trade Wma format files as these contain identifying information that can lead straight back to your machine.
Play safe and rip to mp3 only

(11) Something a lot of people are overlooking, is that leaving the search box open on one of these flooded titles will drop all your primaries, by tying up all the network
Click stop as soon as the files go over 1000 and refine your search, by bitrate, title, connection type. Otherwise you're doing their "dirty work" for them.
A few folks have mentioned this aspect of the flooding, so close those search boxes after searching and press stop quickly if it looks like it's going to "avalanche"

(12) Air your ideas here, along with anything I missed out : )

edit by V44 below......
[Vladd44: I changed the topic name. Change it back if you are displeased.][Edit..no it fine ty Vladd : ) ]

[..Ñøßߥ..]

Well done and thanks Coaldust, thats exactly what i had in mind, a simple guide, i will begin spreading this thread.

[vittijr]

Thank you Nobby for passing along the info. Well done Coal Dust.

I would like to add a little to what CoalDust posted.

For starters, these fake people are targeting popular music.. all genres. Seems they really go nuts for game music, movie soundtracks and anything that hits the charts globally.

Not sure if a file is fake? Do not risk downloading and testing it. We do not know if these fake users are running a TCP viewer and logging IP's.

When doing a search and getting thousands of results, just click the "User" bar in the header of the search window. That will put all users names in alphabetical order. Common sense would tell you that any user would not be sharing 20+ copies of the same song, reguardless of how it is named.

Watch for the same name and hash with a multitude of connection types. i.e. user name: Disturbed426_8947 should not be connected as DSL, Cable and T1 with the same exact ID.

Still not sure? Right click on their name and do a "who is" on them. Most of the fakes are "sharing" 3000 files. Of course it is very possible and many users are at the max for sharing, but go further and browse them. A real user with 3000 files will not have a ton of the same song.

Protect yourself and the future of MX. Take precautions and keep MX going.

[CoalDust]

Great Info there Vittijr, I,m glad to be of help to you all.
The good news is a lot of forums and sites are waking up to the slowly , slowly creeping tactic being employed by the "The industry"
I ask you all to remember they get paid many times over for the same music already, and the artist gets a small fraction of that, so dont listen to the rubbish they spout.
You purchase a cd , you paid for it , you listen on the radio or tv , they had to pay for that (and you pay again for it in turn ), you want it in a different format ..lol your gonna have to pay again.
Now you know why their profits are up this year, greed always corrupts these folks who probably started out as nice guys .
Well there not nice anymore they want you to pay, many times and to that end they employ companies to harass and threaten you.
Wake up Riaa/Mpaa theres more of us than there is of you , and maybe its a good idea to remember that, on the days when we are all gonna boycott you and your products.

[..Ñøßߥ..]

.
who probably started out as nice guys .

lmao, ya think???

[Bender too lazy to log i]

How about making an own peer-cache server? Shouldnt be too hard. That way we could create our own network and lock out certain IP ranges from connecting at the first place. It shouldnt be too hard to make winmx connect to the alternate peercache server by hooking into winsock? Give it some time and the network would be big enough to get decent results.

This would make us also independent from frontcode if they decide to abandon winmx after all (they seem to have lost interest in the Beta's again )

Would only need someone running a dedicated server with some bandwith available

[{MXC}_michael]

how much free bandwidth would be sufficiant?

[Vladd44]

Alternate peer cache has other advantages also.

Would diminish the appeal of attacking the network. and frankly, I dont think getting the word out to a sizeable % of the people would be a problem. Wouldnt be hard to distribute versions of winmx with the dll.

[KM]

a seperate network would be easier to do (wouldn't even need to modify winmx) - but, that wouldnn't be winmx, that would be a different p2p network, so you might as well just make a new client with an improved protocol while you're at it... lol

[CoalDust]

I have put things like Frontcode going belly up on us to the back of my mind for the moment, although it would be good to have a peer cache system in place to restart the network in an emergency.
This would obviously mean a hack to redirect the fixed IP addresses.
Bender do you have any ideas we have not though of here, for protocol level file filtering ?
I,m sure theres a way to deal a blow to some of the flooding,and using a combination of blocking and filtering and common sense, we should be able to do what a lot of the other networks failed to.

[KM]

the peer caches dont have fixed IP addresses, in fact several peer caches have been shut down in the last few years and queries to those caches where simply redirected to other caches

it only uses a DNS lookup to find which peer cache to use, so you dont need to do any fancy modification to winmx to make it use an anlternate cache - just edit your hosts file

but a seperate network still wouldn't be winmx...

[Faceby88]

In response to the fake music files, the files which ive found are NOT fake are ones with busy users sharing the file

Note how these two real files have busy users sharing it...

So far this has worked for me




omg why does everyything i say end up so confusing

[DragonRider]

Has anyone heard of MXHashish? I found it on a site last night http://www.smittystavern.com/winmx/inde ... howforum=3

[`GY¶§Yߦ_Ü]

I was slow to go into rooms at first, due to some very creepy names, but the ones with file minimums ,0 file boot, and Porn = Kick, have proved invalueable to me. Not only have i found some great info, good traders and chat. I also gaithered more files in a few weeks than i had in months of searching. I direct all new users, to Vladd's site and suggest they meet me in room. This improves the over alll WinMx exprience.

As d/l'ers we should all have album wrappers, extractors and separate folders for incoming files and shared. Files full of random singles and incompletes just bog the entire system down with mismatch files. Seems few people know that you can extract a d/ling ALBW fileat 1% to check its contents before you spend hours d/ling a mislabled file
I keep helpful sites in a notepad to p/m to users who need help.

[CoalDust]

Amara wrong thread. Someone lose that post, its not wanted in this help section
And to other folks , please dont post your links here Unless Relevant. We have work to do , distractions can wait.

[louise]

if u want to know if a file is real, start to d.l it then on the transfers page do a search for alts and similar, this will bring up the file whatever people have it called not just the copys that match your search, chances are the people with complete files are the 1s that have it named correctly, this works very well for movies

[bincoder]

Saw Bender suggestion and is delighted at the thought of a more efficient WPN.

Actually the new servers 'could' consult and assimilate the Frontcode server data and filter the results adding that info to the 'secondary' and independant WPN servers.

This would not alter WinMX in any way, just enhance it.

[TOW_OF_Borg]

I agree there

it needs just a handful of IPs of primaries that are on the "real" wpn to be linked in that make an alternative wpn part of the whole.

In fact at the moment chances are anyway that you connect to an island-network even when getting your primary from a real wpn.

[Snyper]

I think the winmx network should have less fools and more people willing to share! what's up with the people who have 0 files! (exept bots) they should only allow people in the network who share files. Oh and the trading should be much more efficient than it is now But the rest i really like, thanx keep up the good work!

Snyper

[vittijr]

if u want to know if a file is real, start to d.l it then on the transfers page do a search for alts and similar, this will bring up the file whatever people have it called not just the copys that match your search, chances are the people with complete files are the 1s that have it named correctly, this works very well for movies

Good Idea Louise. Only one problem with it. Those fake files are there hoping to get users that are unwise to the situation to start a d/l. Notice when you start a fake d/l, you connect but never get anything. This is likely due to the fake people using some sort of a TCP viewer to obtain and log IP's. You can be liable for the "intent" to d/l a file in breech of any copyrights.

I think the winmx network should have less fools and more people willing to share! what's up with the people who have 0 files!

At this point in time Snyper, a lot of ISP's are blocking P2P protocols. Looking at the WinMX forum threads, this seems to be an ongoing issue that is spreading rapidly. I for one, have not been able to u/l since March of 2004.. along with all other users I have met with the same ISP. Many more ISP's are doing the same. I do enjoy the chat part of MX still. So I for one alwyas have 0 shared files. No point in letting someone try to d/l from me to be just as disappointed as they are when they try to d/l a fake file. I do connect as a primary to try to help out letting the secondary people connect through me. Might seem like a leech in one way, but doing my part in another.

[Snyper]

Also i would recommend a way to see if movies are fake. Get a program that is called "VLC Media Player" This will permit you to watch incomplete movie dowloads P.S. each fake file i get i get rid of or change the name to qhat it really is.

[none]

hmmm all of that was confusing...


but thanks, although i no longer use mx for downloading that should be a big help for those that do

[jeffmorse752]

I tried the very same test just now, and also had Protowall's window
showing when I did the search for Evanescence (an RIAA artist whose
music I would never download anyway). Many of the results appeared
to have people in their queues, and browsing a few of them didn't show
any sign of fakes, nor did I get any Protowall hits from file fakers. But
the test is inconclusive - perhaps I should try on a day when Globix,
Fuzion Colo, OnSystems, or PSI-NET are trying to connect as secondaries.
I expect that then I'll get fakes showing up (or Protowall hits along with
File/User Unavailable messages in the search window).

[Loli]

there's this file I found while searching for a band called nightwish, all the users who had it had 3000 files shared and been on line for over 15 hours straight., and more than 100 people where sharing this file, plus they all had an available slot for you to d/l.
what you guys make of it?

[CoalDust]

Any of those ones sharing 3000 files are usually fakes Loli.
If you read the above, you can see that clicking on the USER tab will soon help you sort out most of them, then a browse will weed out any others you may spot.
Thanks to you all for these helpful peices of info , I,ll edit the help soon and incorporate your great ideas
Bender , at the moment its a bit of a leap to go from Winmx to a MegaMx type plugin. Any ideas that can help now ?
We are holding our own folks , and although visitors to the help rooms have increased, theres still plenty of newbies coming into Mx to help increase our numbers.
If you get any new folks in , spread the word about theses anti flooding tips and make sure all your roomies know the drill to do the same .

Anyone else have something to offer ? We are ordinary folks like yourselves and dont have everything under control as sometimes it might appear..lol
You got a suggestion to help ? Lets hear it .