wilkes

I will do that Satan, i never open emails from ppl i dont know, even if it sounds like they know me, i just click and delete em. This thing only went out on my yahoo messenger, it was the darnest thing.

Twstd check your e-mail list for any e-mail addresses you dont know and delete them this happened to me i had opened an e-mail from sombody i didnt know it added its self to my e-mail list and started sending out e-mails from me to people some i didn't even know

Well couple of days ago, someone got on my messenger and sent out raunchy messages to all on the list. I wasnt online at the time and this was very upsetting. No one has/had my password at all. I changed my pass word but wonder how this happened.

My nephew was playing yahoo pool on my computer once. He insulted this person and in turn this person hacked into my computer. He made a window pop up that said f*** You and also made my printer print the same thing. He kept getting into my "Start" menu, so I shut the whole thing down. Took me weeks to get my computer straight. :?

rofl, funny thread. umm, you aren't safe, and don't even begin to think you are. all it takes is time. learn paranoia

Thank you so very much for this information. I will share it with my friend. Her computer has been repaired, but she is afraid to use it now and is seeking a new one. As for me, l can't believe that l am finally seeing some justification for resisting the lure of speedy cable/DSL access. I will gratefully continue to plod along in the technological dark ages with a dail up connection! You're the best, GoWilkes!

In this case, I can imagine 2 scenarios:

1. The ex physically installed a program to let him gain access to the computer. He could have removed the firewall, but since he would have had to been there in order to do that anyway, it's more likely that he installed something like PC Anywhere (there are free versions that one could use in a pinch).

2. The more likely scenario is that the computer was registered with his name, and when she saw that it was downloading something it was just a coincidence that his name popped up. I say that this is more likely, because if someone were hacking into a computer (a federal crime), they would be smart enough to not use their own name to log in. Whatever was downloading could have been virus-induced, which would explain a lot.

With the exception of wireless keyboards, I'm not familiar with a keyboard using any special files that he could have messed up. Besides, messing with those files wouldn't make sense because there would be no advantage for him to do it. The only reason I could imagine an ex trying to gain access to the computer would be to read her emails, but again, the easier (and legal) way for him to do that would be to log in to Bellsouth's webmail before she downloads the emails.

I would bet dollars to pennies that your friend has a virus, and that the ex had little or nothing to do with it. Have her to reboot into Safe Mode, and see if the keyboard works then. If so, let us know and we'll walk you through removing the virus.

Here's a good article on how to boot into safe mode:
http://www.laplink.com/support/kb/article.asp?ID=102

For your own computer, since you have dial-up you probably don't need to worry about a firewall or a hacker. Dial-up (usually) uses dynamic IP address, which means that the IP changes each time you go online, making it almost impossible to be useful to any hacker.

Thanks so much for your response. My friend is separated from her husband, who is a computer programmer. She has a cable connection through Bell South. One day she went to log on and saw the message "(his name) is downloading". From that point on, her keyboard was locked up. Her mouse worked, but she could not access the internet. She of course thinks he did this deliberately. The guy who repaired her computer told her it was possible for hacking to cause these problems. He advised her to change her ISP and not to email him, saying this would allow him to hack into her system again. I was skeptical,thinking, as you mentioned, only a trojan horse virus or some such program that you downloaded would allow intruders into your computer. I felt that she was being paranoid about the email, and thought if people could hack just from the email, all of us are at great risk. I have emailed him and now l am worried that if he gets mad at me, the same thing can happen to my computer. I am on dail-up and do not have a firewall, as l have had bad experiences with both Norton and McAfee. Am l at risk?

Not really, no. If you have a static IP address, then it could be used to hack into your computer if you have no security set up at all, but it's not an easy thing to do.

Dial-up internet does not usually give you a static IP address, these come with the "always on" internet, like DSL or Cable. But when you sign up for one of those, they will usually install a firewall, too, which prevents someone from hacking in that way.

You do give someone your IP address when you send them an email, but the odds of them being able to use it are 1 in a billion. If they did know how to use it, they would also know a hundred easier ways to do the same thing.

The "easier" way for someone to hack into your computer is to send you a trojan-horse type virus. These are often back-doors that open up a port on your computer, allowing the sender to access your computer. These usually aren't all that much of a problem for regular people, though; a trojan horse is usually targeted towards big business that have hundreds of credit card numbers on their computer. Regular people do get them, of course, but that's usually by accident.

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