” Several months of network abuse by advertisement agencies to deliver unwanted search results have only slightly hindered Gnutella’s reputation. Previously, when the user attempted to download one of these “Sponsored Results”, FrostWire would launch the URL associated with this file. The original intent was to allow artists to send users to their own website to promote the content they served on Gnutella. As time went on, advertisers picked up on this functionality and soon began sending massive amounts of unwanted results to the large Gnutella community while using the network as its tool of choice to cloud search results.
We now hope to stop these intrusive advertisements in its tracks by disabling the very function they use to promote themselves. We do not see any benefit for a Gnutella host to send a user to any URL they wish. The removal of this feature not only increases the number of real results displayed within the FrostWire client, it also prevents malicious hosts from sending users to unknown URL’s that can exploit any number of vulnerabilities within a web browser. The magnet protocol is not effected by the removal of this function in any way. ”