Most of them, I'm sure, had no clue I'd have access to their files. Unlike my fellow music swappers on Napster, the people I spied on, including the thrillingly dull man who writes telemarketing scripts and stores the cellphone number of a woman named Trish on his desktop, had no way of knowing why their drives were grinding a little harder than usual. I'm not going to publish the cellphone number or the contents of his scripts. Were he someone I had any interest in exploiting, however, I could have rubbed out every one of those files I found, copied a virus from my computer to his, disabled his e-mail and made him run Linux at least part of the time. I could also publish his address on a newsgroup the makers of Share Sniffer plan to set up, so that others with more destructive intentions could mess around on his hard drive as well.
Somebody has to enable it.
Microsoft has great security modules that people should be using, and people need to get educated about these things. CERT is unfazed. We recommend that consumers just disable Windows file sharing unless they have a really good reason to use it, especially if they have a DSL or cable connection. If the trend continues, Napster will wither away, and the record industry will have to look hard for someone to finger for music swapping. And Hillary Rosen, president of the RIAA, might just be out of a job.