FreeNet is a peer-to-peer platform that comes packed with a complete suite of features for helping users share, download, browse, and chat on forums. Since this is a Java-based application, you should make sure you have previously installed the environment on your computer.
Compared to other similar utilities, FreeNet offers a secured working environment and strong anonymity protection, where users can share data on the Internet without having to fear that they can be tracked by other dedicated tools. The information is encrypted and can be sent only to the selected FreeNet users.
As soon as you run the program, you are required to choose between three security modes. The first one offers the lowest security protection and gives you the possibility to connect to any FreeNet users, while the second allows you to connect only to some users.
The last mode lets you configure the dedicated parameters according to your privacy needs. Plus, you need to pick a size for the directory where the application stores useful data, and select the bandwidth limits.
FreeNet provides two different modes of operation, namely a “darknet” mode, which enables users to connect only to friends, and an “opennet” one for communicating with any other FreeNet users.
When it comes to browsing options, you can navigate anonymously on “freesites” (the sensitive data is not stored by web browsers and is retained within Freenet database), as well as use separate applications or plugins that are loaded into the software. This way, you can chat on forums, link to Freenet websites, write emails, publish websites, and create bookmarks with the selected pages.
Unlike other P2P networks, the application stores data that is transmitted between notes, and after a user uploads a file to the platform, the information remains stored in the nodes even if publisher goes offline.
You can view a list with FreeNet users, statistics about your current activity, peer information (e.g. the number of friends connected, busy contacts), and details about bandwidth. FreeNet works with two different keys, namely CHK (Content Hash Key) and SSK (Signed Subspace Key) and lets users convert file keys to CHK with the possibility to change the filename.
Additional settings allow you to defragment the database, specify the upload and download bandwidth limit, and pick a nickname.
All in all, FreeNet provides a secured way of uploading and downloading files on the Internet. The platform comes packed with many useful features and configurable settings, all of them designed to make sure the transferred data remains private and anonymous.

What's New in This Release:
· This includes Web of Trust version 13, which has some major improvements including much better support for recovering old identities from backups, and some minor bugfixes and robustness improvements for the updater, but the main change is to the installers.
· We now use an up to date version of the wrapper in both the Windows installer and the Linux/Mac installer. For new installs, this should fix some of the antivirus problems on Windows (notably issues with Freenet taking ages to restart and sometimes not succeeding at all on Kaspersky). It should also improve the stability problems on Linux when updating, where Freenet would download a new build and then constantly restart without ever successfully updating. If you see that bug on an old node, the correct fix is to shut down the node manually and start it up again (./run.sh stop; ./run.sh start).
· Finally, the Unix/Mac installer now supports a few more platforms, notably FreeBSD on x86 (32 and 64), Linux on Itanium, and Linux on ARM ...