I think many of the secuirty gurus out there overstate the risks.
Anecdotal evidence: Ive been using p2p as long as they have been in existance- No Firewall, No AV. I have gotten 1 virus that did nothing (it attacked outlook express, which i never use anyways)
Now of course people will point out that i could be trojanned/hacked, etc. But for me, so what? I make back ups- It takes all of 2 hours to reformat and reinstall. However, with three system drives, I could be up and running again in seconds after running a major virus. I dont have my machine running long enough at a time to make a reliable drone for a DDOS attack or something.
As a percentage of p2p users- I would estimate that 1 tenth of 1 percent even have the ABILITY to Hack using kazaa. Of those, even fewer have the time/desire. Chances of actually getting it- so small- might as well not exist.
The main avenue in secuirty is plain common sense. Gee, I wonder if the file named "microsoft universal key code works for everything!!!!!!!!!!" is a legit file? Fake files really arent too hard to spot. Also, its rare for a file had by a significant number of peope is a major virus. They wouldnt be sharing it too long if it was.
If your worried about the big bad RIAA, use an anonymous proxy.
So, in the end, sure there is a risk. However, people blow it out of proportion. For most home users, the only real risk is a headache.
