Network abuse email from Afrihost

R

root01

Active Member
Joined
Jan 19, 2009
Messages
42
Reaction score
0
Location
~/.
I have just received a network abuse email from Afrihost saying i violated their AUP by downloading a series via Bittorrent. Its a very huge email from MediaSentry then IS then Afrihost.

How would encrypt my Bittorent traffic from such monitoring? Where can i also get unmonitored torrents? It seems these guys are also seeding so that they can later send out these letters. Is there a way of spoofing IP address from such monitoring?

UPDATE: The Afrihost AUP (http://www.afrihost.com/terms.php) which they claim i violated does not say anything about such downloads.
 
Last edited:
Afrihost is illegal monitoring your bandwidth usage as set per terms of privacy. They may not monitor you or what you do unless they have a letter from the court. As per terms of privacy, they may not monitor you.
 
You are confusing their T&C with their AUP. From their AUP:

Unacceptable Use

Afrihost's services may only be used for lawful purposes and activities. We prohibit any use of our website/network including the transmission, storage and distribution of any material or content using our network that violates any law or regulation of the Republic. This includes, but is not limited to:
* Any violation of Intellectual Property laws including materials protected by local and international copyright, trademarks and trade secrets.
* Any activity that results in the sale, transmission or distribution of pirated or illegal software.
Click to expand...
 
3Com said:
Afrihost is illegal monitoring your bandwidth usage as set per terms of privacy. They may not monitor you or what you do unless they have a letter from the court. As per terms of privacy, they may not monitor you.
Click to expand...

they aren't. nor is IS. they're just known to spam their resellers.

@OP, undoubtedly blocking the offending peers would help prevent those mailbots bothering IS, and then inturn forwarding the complaint to Afrihost. But then, dont be surprised if speeds take a dive. because it seems these guys setting the bait are also the only descent seeders. kinda hypocritical, even borderline phishing in my eyes; but anyway .. :twisted:

so what to do? ideally , ppl should stop using public torrents, unfortunately i cant help you out with an account on a private tracker, but maybe someone else can? just keep in mind, with private tracking you have a ratio to worry about.
seedboxes/VPS, sure it's an option. but you must be sure of their terms. most of them are obliged to give up your details on request. in my opinion, if you're gonna spend money -rather consider a premium Usenet server, do a search here for info on downloading from the newsgroups via NZBs, we've been talking about that quite a lot.

lastly, on spoofing. i dunno how one would apply it to p2p. the way i understand it the hacker edits every outgoing packet's header to have a bogus return address by some mystical means. ie, not caring for the returning data. now with p2p you really care for the return packet
 
Go Usenet, seriously. Use torrents only for obscure stuff you can't find anywhere else and which no-one will be monitoring anyway.

Peerblock is okay, but if I were the one collecting offending IP addresses I certainly wouldn't be using an IP from the blocked list. The most noticeable effect of using Peerblock will be to reduce peers and speeds rather than to protect you from snotty letters.
 
Ignore it, Afrihost is forced to forward the email to you.

We've all received notices like these. It's all hot steam.
 
@All - thanks for the suggestions
@chris_meier - they insist i violated the AUP not the T&C
 
Last edited:
It's not Afrihost monitoring what you are doing, it's the studios running massive peer-networks that identify IP addresses that are downloading illegal content.
 
IS does not have the ability to unilaterally declare what is and what is not "lawful" use of an internet connection in terms of South African legislation or common law. The main reason they send these is a form of legal insurance... To show that they bona fides intended for your use of their service to be lawful, should it ever come up for consideration by a South African court in the future, which has never happened before. Consider that IS is a huge target for potential litigation, while you are not.

Everyone gets these things. You can safely disregard. As noted, peerblock has detrimental effects on download speeds in places isolated from the internet backbone, like SA. Usenet is much more secure than torrents, although you have to pay a little bit to use a good international provider, or else put up with the vagaries of the IS/SAIX news servers. It's worth it, though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X