Last night I had left the internet turned on on my computer, I have AOL and dial-up. While I was watching TV my computer's A drive started makeing noise. there was no disk in so I assumed it was most likely a hacker atempting to get into my files. So I removed my phone connection from my computer and that stopped the A drive.
What i'm asking is if it's possible that it was a hacker. my father also recently deleted the firewall we had on our computer because it slowed things down when he was online.
also I have heard that if you have dial-up your computer gets a new IP adress every time you sign on, is this true?
Posted by BYuCnslr (Member # 1857) on :
Likelyhood is that it was just your computer normally trying to acess the A drive, I'm assuming that you're using windows, and it'll just happen every once in a while, it's nothing to be afraid of. If you think of it logically, why would someone want to crack into your computer? There isn't any reason. And yes, your IP address is renewed everytime you use dialup, and for most DSL and cable as well. Satyagraha
[ December 06, 2003, 11:33 AM: Message edited by: BYuCnslr ]
Posted by MEC (Member # 2968) on :
Yes I know that windows does that but It was doing it repeatidly for a longer period of time and only stopped when I disconnected from the internet.
Posted by BYuCnslr (Member # 1857) on :
Yet, again, I ask the question, why would they? To crack your way into a computer takes a bit of skill and effort, it's not something someone will just randomly do to an unknown person just because they want to. And, sometimes programs will want to randomly attempt to access your A drive, possibly there was something that made AOL try to do it. You don't really have to worry, it's possible but extremely unlikely, the chances of it being a hacker is pretty much close to nil, you don't have anything they want. Satyagraha
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
A virus I had a long time ago caused excessive disc accesses.
Posted by Argèn†~ (Member # 4528) on :
It's very likely that your own AOL program is doing it, and not a hacker. If you wanted to test if there was any "hacking" going on, leave the AOL program on but not connected to the internet, and leave it sit for a while. If the disk accesses begin happening again, then it's definitely not outside interference. Next, see if it does it with AOL off.
Also, if you are running Windows XP, there is a built-in firewall you can turn on that your dad cannot uninstall. The only suggestion I would make is to read up on actually using it before activating it, because it's not as straight-forward as something like ZoneAlarm. Most people don't even know that Windows has its own firewall, but very soon, they're gonna know for sure.... with the next service pack or maybe next hotfix, Windows will have services like that on by default.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
There's a bigger chance your A: drive is failing than it is a hacker... From your info, it's really difficult to come to any hard conclusion.
That said, yes, ISPs like AOL assign you an IP randomly every time you log on.