Hi, The way I hear it, Imesh was the least popular of the P2P solutions out there, it's got lots of unhappy users at download.com :) There are apps out there to help you screen apps with the ability to phone home, I've disabled a few of them to stop them doing exactly that, (vgirl for instance) I do actauly legally own the anims, I just don't want it sending me porn popups at work. It also coninually pings it's home server which rings bells on the firewall... Then there is the mighty "Zone Alarm" and the lesser known, but well respected tfw (Tiny firewall) The PC team here use it. I use Zone Alarm myself, it's great, it'll stop anything, even the OS, from accessing the network. It even tells you when a program requests server privilleges, and can make you machine invisible to anything on the 'net. Wonderfull bit of kit. All you need then is a Virus checker, (Norton for preference) and you're sorted. Won't stop new viruses. But you can mitigate the problem by using prodcuts other than the MS defaults. Avoid Outlook like the plague! and try not to install IM software or anything else that keeps contact lists. If you've got XP get "XPanti-spy3" to stop your OS, and browser from doing the dirty on you, improves broadband bandwith too. later jb