I was traveling this weekend and had a long airport delay, so forked over some $$ for wi-fi.

When I opened iTunes, and plugged in my iPod to load a new audiobook, I was startled to see "Joshua's iPod" listed in the list.

Now, I'm running Net Barrier and Little Snitch - so don't know how I got someone else's iPod listings - I disconnected it immediately and turned off file sharing at the system preferences - but it freaked me out!

Anyone have a clue what happened?

You can share your tunes in iTunes. There's even a program that I know of that allows you to, uh, ahem, "borrow" songs from their library.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2006 10:29AM by rz.

Net Barrier? Why?

Just because you saw someone else's info doesn't mean you're not properly locked down.

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I guess my question is how I got on their network - or they on mine without any alerts?

you paid for internet access which is exactly the same as being on a public network. so did someone else. it must be a successful service.

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open iTunes >> preferences >> Sharing >> look for shared libraries

you can turn that off if you want -- or be cool and turn on "share my library" so Justin could have seen yours =)

and you had NOTHING to worry about.

my buddy who works in a large hospital says everyone has theirs on so they can all listen to each others music when they are at work -- great to sample other peeps stuff

i have also heard this being done at many free wifi and other (like college) wifi spots

you succumbed to the paranoia inflicted upon us mac users by windows peeps -- remember: there are NO viruses or spyware for the mac -- but windows users keep telling us "someday the sky will fall for you too!!!" and make us all get paranoid over nothing.

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2006 11:43AM by jdc.

It's called iTunes music sharing. It uses Bonjour. You have complete control over it via iTunes Preferences.

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I'm running Net Barrier and Little Snitch

...and Mac OS X's built-in firewall and when you're at home you connect via a hardware router?

It's hard to believe your Mac can communicate at all. I'd say you have some serious overkill there, vicrock...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2006 11:45AM by Article Accelerator.

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vicrock
I guess my question is how I got on their network - or they on mine without any alerts?

"Joshua" was obviously somewhere else in the airport on the same network and had his iTunes sharing enabled. His problem, not yours.

A similar thing happened to me a few months ago. Opened iTunes on my computer and saw the library of neighbor kid. I scrolled through the list but didn't attempt to play any of them. It disappeared a few minutes later. I later told her about it later and she was amazed.

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tronnei
A similar thing happened to me a few months ago. Opened iTunes on my computer and saw the library of neighbor kid. I scrolled through the list but didn't attempt to play any of them. It disappeared a few minutes later. I later told her about it later and she was amazed.

Then the neighbor kid was on your network. iTunes sharing does not work over the internet, only LANs (unless both of you have really old versions of iTunes). You need to be on the same subnet, i.e. the first three numbers in you IP address need to match. Not saying that it was deliberate. Probably just grabbed the first wireless signal it saw.

Thanks all!

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Lux Interior

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tronnei
A similar thing happened to me a few months ago. Opened iTunes on my computer and saw the library of neighbor kid. I scrolled through the list but didn't attempt to play any of them. It disappeared a few minutes later. I later told her about it later and she was amazed.

Then the neighbor kid was on your network. iTunes sharing does not work over the internet, only LANs (unless both of you have really old versions of iTunes). You need to be on the same subnet, i.e. the first three numbers in you IP address need to match. Not saying that it was deliberate. Probably just grabbed the first wireless signal it saw.

That's what I thought too, but she says they use dial-up and don't have a wireless computer. Don't know what to make of it.

You would both have to be running iTunes v 4.0 for internet sharing of music to work. Any versions after that were intentionally disabled for legal reasons.