I'm writing this in the hopes that this message might protect someone from harm. There is a program out there called Hello. It's a picture trading program that allows instant sharing of pictures between people.
Now, this might sound real good. I thought it was too. But remember the saying if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is? Well this is the case here. There is a danger in using this program. I didn't see it until the danger was pointed out to me. I didn't see it until it was, and now I can't believe I didn't see it before.
The danger is, someone can send you pictures of ANY kind of content without your knowledge or consent, and there isn't anything that can stop them. The danger is trusting someone you don't know. If you start trading pictures with someone you don't know they could mix in anything from pornography to the worst kind of things you never wanted to see, and once its on your computer its too late.
Ok, so just delete them you say. Yes, thats exactly what should be done if you catch it. But what if you dont catch it? What if you fail to catch these files and they lurk on your hard drive until someone else finds them? You can see how this would become a very bad situation very quickly. Its even worse because if you forget and leave the program running, anyone can simply push some pictures to you and there is noone to delete them or stop them.
Hopefully you can see how this would be the worst kind of thing that could happen. There is no security, no safeguards, no prevention built into this program to filter content. It's not a typical peer to peer program like Kazza or Bearshare, where you have to activley look for content. Someone can just send it to you without you knowing what it is until it's too late.
There is also the HUGE security risk of allowing a program to just accept whatever files someone sends. It opens the possibility of other files to be slipped onto your computer (Virus's, trojan horses, etc). Also consider this scenario of the worst kind. Someone sneaks in child pornography in a batch of files. Guess what? you could be in serious trouble if someone finds them, even if you didn't know they were there.
So protect yourself. DO NOT USE HELLO. If you have it, delete it! Please do not allow yourself to become a victim. I hope this message has been useful and eye-opening. If you have any questions or comments, please let me know. Thanks.
