some idiots actually put their financial data in their ptp upload folder, or made their whole hard drive an upload folder, making it available to everyone. I would have thought these numpties should be punished rather than the person who exploited it.

As computers are quite cheap and external hard drives are available , a wise man would never place insecure financial data on a file swapping machine in the first place !

But as Forrest Gump would say "Stupid is , Stupid does !"

I think file sharers get the darwin award on a regular basis anybody remember Kazaa!(?spl) that thing had more spyware than most trojans will download for you but it was free and so many boxes got the pox it was it's own little epidemic.Limewire has had numerous exploits and of course there are the trojaned downloads of copyrighted material via the RIAA and MPAA . It won't stop and nobody is going to know about this but a bunch of old IT guys that read the Register and we don't P2P that much and if we do we don't share our entire hdd with the world and we probably don't keep loan applications or other personal data around where others can share them. I will however remember this in case I need a little of the ready.

What evidence was actually produced that P2P software was used in the alleged purloining of the information.

"The fact that he [the suspect] appears to be have been able to cherry-pick only those people earning more than $150,000 suggests he had a wealth of user files to choose from,"

How many people are there that earn more than $150,000, use P2P software and don't know how to lock down their hard drive.

The more likely explanation is that they clicked on an email attachment using OUTLOO~1 running on WINDOW~1. But shoosh, we aren't allowed to mention that as the REGIST~1 might lose the advertising revenue.

"How many people are there that earn more than $150,000, use P2P software and don't know how to lock down their hard drive."

IMHO there are many people like this. And they have an infection worse than most spyware. Spreads all kinds of problems - it is called teenage kids!!

High earning parent, not an IT expert (as they have an IT guy in the office to sort those things). Parent problally doesn't even know what a "hard drive" is (bet you they just point at the tower itself...)

Teenage kids at home with access to the "family" PC. Their mates tell them about "free music". So they install all kinds of rubbish P2P networks, ringtones, free games. And, of course, the male teenagers surfing Pr0n sites they find via Google.....

My job? To fix home PCs which get into this state. I think teenagers are great. Make me so much money fixing this. LoL. I am heading out to another fresh client now. LoL In fact, it is now a standard question: "How old is that PC? Do you have teenagers? Males? Ahhhh..."

So he was able to "purchase thousands of dollars of merchandise, which he resold at half their true value" was he? I think what you meant to say was half their RRP - it rarely has any bearing on their true value.

We recently had a major IT upgrade with the usual churn of contractors. A project folder was set up to share information.

One contractor came in, created a sub-folder in the project folder then dumped just about every piece of personal information he had into it. Names, addresses & phone numbers of everyone he knew. Bank account details, passwords, the whole shebang. All of it was contained in non-password protected spreadsheets.

All available to 100+ people with access to the folder.

Luckily for him I'm not a crook and made him aware of what he'd done. However, I was concerned that someone working on an IT project of this type didn't know this.

How dare The Register mention anything about P2P software, even in passing, in anything less in glowing terms?! Don't the know that the great goddess P2P is the most powerful of all internet gods, bountiful supplier of 'free-stuff' to all her children?

You must be punished for this heresy!

The same principal applies to P2P software as does all software. If the user is in the habit of doing stupid things with the software then it is fault of the software. People are stupid, we know this, therefore it is the required spec of the software that it should be designed with this in mind. If P2P software is in the habit of catching out users, no matter how dumb you may thing they're being, then the P2P software's design is flawed.

Personally, I think you need to be mad to let most P2P software near your computer.

If I decide to print my credit card number up on the web and someone uses these details to buy them selfs something pretty (like a car) who is to blame, me or the guy with the new car, as far as I would be concerned it was my fault for being a tard,

By using P2P software to share their personal information on the internet these "Victims" have given everyone free rights to copy said personal information, so therefore "Computer Hacking" should be dropped from his list of offences. (and i have to say that I am not too sure about the "Mail Fraud" one either, must be a US thing

"Kopiloff was arrested and charged last week with mail fraud, computer hacking and aggravated identity theft offences. If convicted, he faces a maximum 29 years imprisonment."

29 years for abusing dumb people.... there is no justice!

I can't comment on limewire as I've never used it but a couple of points

Soulseek is designed with the idiot in mind and it doesn't allow a user to share their whole hard drive

Also other reports I've seen on this say that he used traditional ID theft techniques of dumpster diving too