Spy software or hacker?

[mattburklund]

My brother knows little about computers, but he has a friend who works for a computer company. This friend can find out anything my brother has done on his computer from his comptuer, even if he has cleaned out his cache, cookies and trashcan. My brother has a software firewall up. This friend help set up his comptuer a long time ago, and I was curious as to know if its possible he loaded some type of spy software on his computer. My brothers friend said all he needed was someones email address and he could get into there computer and find out anything. Is that possible? He also gets into the company that holds my brothers pager, and finds out who paged my brother when, and this is information that even his large paging company wont give him, and says that nobody can get that informaion because of there vast coporate firwalls. Anyway its driving my brother nuts, because this guy knows every thing he does. Is there a way to stop it, and is there away to completely erase your internet activitie so that no one can hack into your computer and find it?

 

[jlanka]

all he needed was someones email address and he could get into there computer and find out anything. Is that possible?

Certainly not.

<pre> \|/
jlanka (. .)
___________oOOo_(_(_)_)_oOOo___________
</pre><p>

 

[sturm]

Has ne shown any proof that he can do it. It sounds like hes pulling a fast one on you or hes the best hacker that the world has ever seen, NOT!!!

 

[mattburklund]

He has shown proof about the pager hacking. He will call my brother up and say: "hey, this number called you at this time, what was that all about?" He has to hack into some company(I forget which one, but a huge one in Oregon).

 

[mattburklund]

HI I'm Chuck, my brother, Matt, has been helping me sort out some harmless mischief my software friend has been playing on me.My friend,"Mike", writes software for a national firm, and is good at what he does. Being a "newbie", I let him set up my computer and operating system.No problem, everything works great. Great, except I don't have any privacy! I asked him to relay some financial info to me, he asked for my e-mail address so he could send it. My Juno account showed "new mail" and i retrieved the mail. It took several seconds for my broadband to recieve the mail, about the time it takes to receive 5 or 6 junk mails. But my "in box" said "Zero e-mails received". No biggie. Later, while surfing the net, I did a Google Search on an old sailboat.Google said "we have found 9 websites matching your request", however it listed not 9, but 13 websites. 4 sites were completely unrelated to the "Aphrodite 101 Sailboat" and were directly related to the financial info i requested from Mike. Mike called the next day and asked if i got the financial sites he recommended. I said "yeah, but how'd you do that?" He laughed and said "do what?" Okay guys, WHAT DID MIKE DO?
Windows 98 SE
software firewall.
I use outlook express to download my e-mail from Juno to my computer.
Once a month I receive a e-mail with no sender, subject,or return address. And it takes longer to open than any other e-mail. Also I hear my harddrive going crazy while it's downloading this blank message. Is this possibly spyware in use? <P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by mattburklund on 07/18/03 02:07 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[MrBurns]

Try to run AdAware and Spybot, and delete everything they find, if these files cant be system files or files from a program you know. A lot of Spyware-files are in the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM folder, but I normally know, which files are no real system-files.

AMD Athlon XP 2700+
Epox 8rda+
Thermaltake Volcano 7+
2x256 MB PC2700
Creative GeForce 4 Ti 4800 (4600 Chip)
Chieftech Case
WD 80GB/8MB HDD
16x48 DVD-ROM
20x10x32 Burner

 

[Zoron]

Possibly spyware, but what it sounds like is that he is intercepting your email. Since he set up your computer, did you also tell him your userID and password for your email? It's almost like he's set up his system to intercept your email and then forward it on to you. I'd get your login info changed immediately. It's also possible he phoned Juno and obtained your userID and password from them with your email address; though I'm not sure on that one.

Go to www.pandasoftware.com to do a full virus scan. Get your hands on SpyBot: Search & Destroy or Adaware to check for spyware. He's obviously done something, though I don't know what.

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

 

[Jake_Barnes]

Spyboot is great.
Sounds like you let him set your username and password - change that/those passwords now.


<b><font color=red>It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is. - Bill Clinton<b><font color=red>

 

[mattburklund]

Mr Burns, Thanks, Ad Aware & Spybot turned up 257 items, some pretty generic looking stuff, plus something from Cydoor, that I couldn't figure out. Anyway, deleted everything with no ill effects. Thanks for the info. Will try for the long run.

 

[mattburklund]

Zoron, Yes, I let Mike set up everything. You may be right about him phoning Juno, that's his style. I appreciate your advice. Panda found no viruses.

 

[purplexed]

I would format and reinstall, change ID and password and email

 

[mattburklund]

Good Advice,Thanks.