Hey! That's Some Stranger's Music in My iTunes!

[Chris Gohlke]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/001462.html' target='_blank'>http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/001462.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"OK, now this is just plain weird. I'm in a hotel in New York City at the moment, doing a bit of work on my PowerBook laptop. A moment ago, I popped into iTunes for a moment, and discovered...the music collection of a stranger. Sitting there alongside my own playlists. Let's protect this music lover's privacy by calling him "Al." I was able to browse through Al's sizable song library (he seems to be a Spice Girls fan, though he's also partial to movie soundtracks and, like me, has a weakness for the Carpenters) and even listen to a track. No mystery, really: iTunes has a feature that lets you share your music with other people on a network. When you're on a hotel's high-speed Internet connection, you are, indeed on a network. One which you share with a bunch of perfect strangers. Al, no doubt, is a fellow guest here."</i><br /><br />Luckily, it seems that while this feature is not widely known, it is turned off by default. Still why is this type of peer to peer sharing considered to be OK?

[Darius Wey]

One would think people would at least consider password protecting their iTunes shared music library? It's an available feature, yet no one seems to bother using it. :?

On a side note, here is an interesting document (http://www.airscanner.com/security/05101001_itunes.htm) which discusses a vulnerability in the iTunes Shared Music service.

[ruindpzzle]

you can "only" stream it, so you're not really doing anything other than allowing other people to listen to it. which could potentially interest you in buying more music right? :)

[jizmo]

This does happen in some Hotels. I personally think it's a really, really neat feature.

If you're abroad, you'll likely find some shares with some local music that you can browse and play without having to go to a store and just buy a random CD .. something you likely wouldn't do anyway.

Who knows, maybe you'll find a local band that's so good that you really have to purchase their CD later.

[bluemax]

Hotel networks are notoriously insecure. There are reports of people hacking other people's e-mails and files because the network is so open. When connecting to any hotel network the attitude should be "shields up". Make sure your firewall is active and set to kill.

Bill B.

[yada88]

I have to disagree with Chris, and say that this is a great feature built into iTunes. I'm at college, and it's great to be able to listen to music that others on my immediate network subnet have. It's also nice at home where I can access the music from every computer on every other computer. As has already been noted, without a third party add-on, this is for streaming only. In an atmosphere of DRM which I know Jason Dunn and others on this site love to scream and yell at, it's great that a company like Apple which has such close ties to the music industry was able to put a feature like this in and keep it. It's basically free music, just without the storage. Gotta love it!