On Sunday 17 August 2008 09:17, Dalek Invasion wrote: > Hi, > > I'm new to FreeNet. A few questions not found in the FAQs. > > 1) How 'big' is FreeNet, as in how much data and files are available and > how 'useful' is FreeNet as it is now? I've had a look around and there > seems to be a fair amount of sites on the main indexes although after a > few days of exploration it seems most 'interesting' sites would be > exhausted unless I am missing something? I suppose there are many > unannounced sites not open to the public. I also presume FreeNet is > used for some 'closed' networks amongst trusted peers only that is not > accessible to the public FreeNet.
There are hundreds of sites linked from the various indexes, some of which are largish. A lot of filesharing etc goes on via FMS and Thaw. > > 2) How can I find 'friends'? I don't know anyone else running FreeNet. You can't. If your friends start using Freenet, you can connect to them. If you get 5-20 such connections, you can turn off insecure mode, and provided that the bad guys haven't already identified you, your node then becomes more or less invisible. > > 3) As FreeNet is 'alpha', is it recommended only to developers or it is > a useful information and communication medium yet with a significant > size of nodes? Where does it say that it's alpha? I thought we changed that. It is definitely pre-1.0, with some serious design issues still to be addressed. In terms of network size we probably have a few thousand nodes at this point. > > 4) There are no boards or discussion threads available when I start > Frost - how do I find active discussion boards and when I post do I > remain anonymous or am I assigned some sort of FreeMail address to use? > There is not much documentation on Frost. Use FMS. > > 5) And a natural question heard many times, is there much seriously > morally objectionable content plaguing FreeNet? I support the > philosophy of FreeNet but I hope it won't degenerate in to just another > haven for mentally deranged perverts. Yes. Freedom of speech (technically freedom of data exchange) includes freedom for perverts to publish pictures that we'd rather they didn't publish, also political views you may dislike (terrorist/pedophile/animal rights advocacy), and "terrorist manuals" such as the anarchist cookbook. Read the philosophy page on the website for the official view on this. > > 6) What other index pages / search engines are there or is what is in > the main index pages pretty much what's there to explore in FreeNet? Searching is a bit of a problem at the moment. Basically what you have is the Freenet freesites web, plus the discussion boards and anything you can get keys from there, plus the Thaw indexes. > > 7) When I installed FreeNet I was advised to use an email address as my > node name, why? Won't this compromise the security and anonymity of my > node? This is only visible to your friends, as it explains on the page. > > 8) As FreeNet will undoubtedly attract nasty people, am I running a > major security risk on my computer (Linux based) by running FreeNet, > leaving it open to hacking? We don't think so. Security problems on Freenet relate mostly to it not providing as much anonymity/privacy as it should: there is a lot of work to do before we can begin to be happy with its security. > > Any assistance appreciated :-) > > Thanks in advance.. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: <https://emu.freenetproject.org/pipermail/support/attachments/20080819/026711b1/attachment.pgp>
