RE: Secretly Monitor EVERYTHING your spouse/child has been doing on INTERNET !

[Jay McNally jmcnally@xxxxxxxx]

Some months ago I was on my home computer using aol. My computer is also
used by my 3 kids, two of whom are in high school, and out of nowhere on my
screen came a dialog box with a message from someone who told me he had
access to the innards of my hard drive.


He then asked me the passwords of a yahoo or some other free chat-room
program that my kids used (that I had no idea about), then informed me he
was going to turn the image on my screen upside down, which he
did. Suddenly it was as if my computer screen was upside down! Then he
said he was going to make everything blue and yellow, or some such colors,
which he did, to my utter astonishment.


I was in a sort of shocked disbelief, and immediately turned off the
machine. I called then immediately called by phone the folks at aol who
run some desk assigned in some way to track down illegal hacking, and the
aol investigator/help desk person told me I should basically turn off the
machine and get a virus program. That was it.


My son told me the guy got in through one of the chat programs my daughter
subscribed to, which was quickly unsubscribed by me. It is my
understanding the guy had total access to everything in my machine, and I
should be grateful he did not tamper with any of it.


My kids tell me there are many opportunities for criminal sorts to hack
into other one's computers if one is not careful. I'm told the old Napster
and the thousands of the current Napster clones are sources of some of
this. Odds are that if anyone has teens using their computer, they are
using a Naster-styled program to get free music.



At 10:30 AM 4/10/02 -0700, you wrote:

> Bob, I can't tell you whether this particular program is fake, but in
> principle it is quite easy...IF someone has access to your machine. The
> application they're touting has to be installed locally. So unless your
> computer is wide-open to the net, it'd have to be an "inside job".
>
>
> -Brian H.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: RJW823@xxxxxxxx [mailto:RJW823@xxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2002 2:19 PM
> To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
> Subject: Fwd: Secretly Monitor EVERYTHING your spouse/child has been
> doing on INTERNET !
>
> While this applies to programs beyond Xy, can anyone tell me if it's a fake?
> Friends have received similar e-mail and asked me the same question -- which
> I couldn't answer.
>
> If it's not a fake, doesn't it raise issues beyond privacy? For instance,
> someone with a chapter of a book drafted in Xy or Word could have it stolen
> and used, leaving no tracks. Even the privacy question is disturbing. I
> realize (and was reminded long ago by Carl's welcoming letter) that no E-mail
> can be presumed to be private), but the notion of someone having secret
> access to everything in my computer makes me very uncomfortable.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> Bob White