At National Online Safety, we provide multi-award-winning online safety education for the whole school community. It’s our mission to make the internet a safer place for children. We believe that when children go online to learn, communicate or play, they should be able to do so safely. That’s why we provide schools all over the world with the knowledge they need in order to tackle new and evolving online risks.
Closed Peer Sharing
You might remember Napster. You may have heard of BitTorrent. If you haven't (or if you have, but aren't sure how they work), check out our short explainer video on P2P (peer-to-peer) sharing.
What is closed-peer sharing?
Closed, or anonymous peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing is a distributed application in which the nodes, which are used to share resources, or participants are anonymous by default.
The anonymity of participants is usually achieved by special routing overlay networks that hide the physical location of each node from other participants.
Interest in anonymous P2P systems has soared in recent years for many reasons, including the desire to share files without revealing your network identity and risking litigation, to distrust in governments, concerns over mass surveillance and data retention, and lawsuits against bloggers.
For more information on the associated risks and online safety tips for parents and carers, watch our explainer video, available to those with a National Online Safety membership.
