[moonray]

A sceniero -- Say you sent an email to someone oversea's and this person responds back and at the bottom of their email is an attachment window. After clicking on this attachment is everything that you have been looking at on the computer for that day.Every picture every website everything.How does this other person have the capability to back into your system and watch what your looking at? Sounds like invasion of privacy. How does one stop something this or can you? Kind of creapy knowing that someone is watching what sites your on. Any thought's on this.

[Frogbox]

Big Brother Is Watching !
sounds like you got spyware on your system.
try getting a spyware removal program, Panda makes a good one, so does Microsoft( Microsoft Defender)
Get a program like window washer,or 1Click Sweep and clean all traces of your surfing off of your system.
Since I don't know your habits on surfing, a lot of free downloads and videos off the net contain spyware, if you download music ( the biggest culprit second only to porn ) it will be harder to keep it off.
If you want to run a scan for spyware www.PCPit.com has a free test and even more ideas to remove it.

Good Luck

[surfcitylocal]

Not an expert but a bit of advice.

1. Never open an email from someone you don't know.
2. Never open an attachment unless you know who sent it and why.

Protect yourself. The attachment window may just be a logger program that pulls the browser history and displays it.

[LuvmyxB]

I just got an email and when I forwarded it my family and friends were getting over two hundred times! My cousin called and said "can you delete me from your email so I can stop getting the same email over and over" and I knew the person who sent it so she had to have something on her computer that mine didnt pick up on!!

Adware is good also.

[Cravin]

Here is a great free antivirus all you need to do is register it and they e-mail you a product key for free! I recommend this for all of my customers. It automatically updates itself too so no problemos. While youre at that site get the latest versions of Adaware and Spybot search and destroy.

[moonray]

Thank's -- I'll check that out when I get home later today. But I do have spybot search & destroy, webroot spysweeper and norton antivirus which I seem to run almost daily now. I guess you can't have enough of these types of programs in this day and age.

[Frogbox]

just so you guys know, spybot adds a keylogger to your register, so does adaware. they sell your info , most places that "give" you free stuff have a way to make money.

and on that "other" site I noticed a few posts that run hidden programs of an unwanted nature, and it doesn't get noticed by norton, spybot or adaware.

Norton doesn't always catch a lot of newer spyware, they are behind about 2 weeks in detection. panda is much, much better.written by guys in europe where virus attacks are alot higher.

so moonray you said something about an over seas e-mail? europe maybe?
(thats a clue)

the best way to protect yourself is to first read the EULA for each and every program you install

[Cravin]

Point me to the info about spybot and adaware installing keyloggers thats new to me.

[Gcat007]

Run linux.

If you do run windows at least run a browser other than Explorer. Firefox, Opera or Deepnet are all excellent browser.

Mail... try something like Eudora, Gmail or Thunderbird. USE the spam filters or at least make seperate filters for stuff you know is important.

Spam... Never answer them. Not even to have them take you off their mailing list. When you do that you acknowledge that the address is good. All you do is get more spam.

Spyware... spybot is good enough. I've used it on my current machine and have had no problems yet. I loaded Norton up and ran it and we're clean. That was after about 8 months with no anti virus program at all.

Instant messengers... got more than one? They munch a lot and I mean a lot of RAM. Use a program that combines them all into one thing. I use trillian. It hosts AIM, Yahoo, ICQ and MSN in one utility.

Best thing is to be smart. Guys do ya really want bigger fuller breasts? Ladies do ya really want a longer bigger penis? (on you not your opposite!) Also it's always good to back up your computer and reinstall windows about once every 6-8 months. Not just a rescue install either. Do a full wipe and start from the beginning. It's about a 4 hour task but if you back your stuff up you should be able to install most things within minutes.

[Frogbox]

Gcat, you said what I was about being smart, read the EULA and it should help.

For a cleaner for your system there are a number of them, I use 1click sweep from PC solutions, completely cleans your hard drive( when proper settings are used.

I worked for a number of years for "The Big Brother" in security, they go by 3 initials and found the sweeper to be one of the best.

Cravin, with spybot it records a lot of info from your system and sends it back to them, they say it helps them in detection ( it's in the EULA, not worded so most people can understand)

of course you can always use a program like I got, someone trys to hack my machines it gives them a real nasty program that eventually erases their hard drive ( a present from my old employer) they can get the info but lose it and more.

[moonray]

Well what an interesting day it was. It seems we had the unfortunate displeasure of being hacked. This scumbag has just F'd things all up! My wife can no longer access her internet lady's bag bussiness on I-Offer. This scum has changed all her password and log on info and has even attacked her Email address on Myway.com and locked her out of that. What a mess. She called one of those computer help places and had them come out to the house. He ran a series of tests and whatnot but it'll never be the same. She can now log into her email but still has no access to her thing on I-Offer.
All because she was curious and had to open that attachment. Big lesson learned here and now a very costly one at that. All her hard work is now down the drain until I-Offer gets off it's fat butt and fixes this on their end. CRAP ..............................