Mayday!! Help required from ppruners

[Radar Departure]

Arrrggghhh!!!!! Just checked my hours remaining, and I'm just about skint with a week to go before billing date.

Someone has used about 80 hours of my allotment while I haven't been here; this happened once before with napster, and I can only assume it's that again, but I have uploads set to zero, and I always exit the program from my systray.

Double emergency here... I only have enough to log on and check email each day... no JB for a week http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/frown.gif http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/frown.gif and if it keeps happening I could be up for a fortune in extra hours.

Help!!!! Anything else it could be?

Emails would be appreciated, otherwise answer here and I'll have to take my chances with logging on at work.

RD (in crisis)

[sprocket]

I had a mysterious loss of prepaid time a couple of weeks ago, not long after I tried one of the freebies mentioned on computer/internet issues forum....Naviscope
Maybe its one of those Trojan thingies that find your passwords?? http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/eek.gif

This sounds serious!

[Tartan Gannet]

Try installing a firewall. I have and it informs me if anything is trying to access when Im online and blocks them.

My problem the exact opposite. My "Free" ISP cuts me off without warning and I have to use another and pay line charges if I want to download a large file.

[a_random]

TG - try using GoZilla! (sic) for downloads. I also have 0800 internet that cuts me off after an hour, but this handy little utility just picks up where it left off. It is free to download.

http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/powertools/

RD - have you thought of unmetered access? I have found UK Fantastic great if you don't mind phone bills (look how short my email address is!) or The Free Internet (via Excite.co.uk) if you want to pay £90 for a year (I hopped in early - £50 bargain!). Few connection problems, no real worries & tech staff helpful.

[This message has been edited by a_random (edited 14 November 2000).]

[Ausatco]

A-random,

Gozilla has embedded code that reports your browsing activity back to some a r s e h o l e s who then target you with advertising that they think you will be susceptible to. What's worse is they don't tell you about it and after you uninstall Gozilla the adbot software stays on your system and continues to do its surreptitious reporting thing.

You can find out more from www.grc.com (http://www.grc.com) . Follow the links to Optout and internet security and privacy.

I don't know how everyone else feels, but I do not like to support or use a company or product that behaves in such an underhand way.

The GRC site recommends a personal firewall called Zone Alarm which I use and highly recommend. I only use a dial-up connection, but its amazing how many people try to snoop your system while on line, even for short periods like an hour or so. Zone Alarm stops them, reports their attempts to you and also prevents the ad bots in software like Gozilla from sending their info about you from your computer.

Cheers,

A paranoid AA

[InFinRetirement]

Yep, have to agree Ausatco. He is referring to AUREATE. A nasty organisation who use their infiltration tactics via Gozilla and others for the purpose of giving you advertising pop-ups etc., Aureate embeds itself in your system under other names and its a helluva job finding it. It's a major registry job and requires great care when removing it.

It is irriating, interfereing and its illegal. The courts in the US are currently investigating their methods but they still keep uop their dirty deeds.

My advice? Go to www.zonelabs.com (http://www.zonelabs.com) and get yourself ZoneAlarm, one of the best firewalls for free. Make sure you get the latest version. It closes and open port which ICQ uses - which can also cause problems when it "pops in" has a look round, takes info, and you have another infiltrator. The best bit about ZoneAlarm is that it just sits there working away ALL the time you are online.




[This message has been edited by InFinRetirement (edited 14 November 2000).]

[R O Tiree]

Just installed Zone Alarm. Triffic! It alerted about 10 times in 2 hours. It has to be said that 9 of those were completely explainable (like leaving a site before it had finished downloading, so the last site kept bothering me to see if I wanted any more of the page) but the 10th..... I dunno. Not an address I recognised. Just stopped it dead. Why didn't I install this before??? :)

[ExSimGuy]

A suggestion - if you're on dial-up, and you think maybe something is causing your computer to download while you're not there, you could always remove the phone jack.

You could switch it iff - but maybe like me it's also your answering machine!

------------------
---- "Per Ardua ad Mixas" ----
(Through hardship to the bars)

[jjj]

You could try one of the free isps around to give you a few extra hours.
http://www.freeonline.com.au
http://www.globalfreeway.com.au

[CrashDive]

I've had Napster stay resident in memory, even though I've closed down the application window.

My advice is to try this:

Start napster application, connect to the Napster Server, then close the Napster application.
Now do a <Ctrl><Alt><Del> and see what applications are still running - not saying that it will be. But it's worth investigating.

Ps. I only noticed it when, having shut down my Napster window, and several minutes later my disc drive whirred into life. On another occasion I had a message on my screen in the morning telling what a great music collection I had - I'd disconnect prior to going to bed (so I thought).

[criticalmass]

Agree about Zone Alarm, I find it excellent. Occasionally I get repeated warnings about attempts to access my machine in a session, other times I get a few only. Nice to have the site number of the "pinger" too. Well worth giving it a try.

[Ausatco]

A couple of nice little proggies that team up well with Zone Alarm so you can find out who and where the buggers are:

Sam Spade from www.samspade.org (http://www.samspade.org)

and

Neo Trace from Neoworx www.neoworx.com/goonline/ntcurs.asp (http://www.neoworx.com/goonline/ntcurs.asp)

Just copy the IP address that Zone Alarm reports into the input field on these progs, click the go button and see what you get. You can get names and addresses sometimes, so if you think the probing is malicious or unreasonably frequent or unethical, etc, take whatever follow-up action you want.

Cheers

AA

[This message has been edited by Ausatco (edited 17 November 2000).]