My boss had her PC hacked and a few days later her bank accounts were sucked dry.

I was wondering what are the best tools/ways to hide ur ID and IP while ur on the internet.

My boss had her PC hacked and a few days later her bank accounts were sucked dry.

I was wondering what are the best tools/ways to hide ur ID and IP while ur on the internet.

Wow.

Anyway... I can get really in depth, but I'll try not to.

1: IP addresses are part of the TCP/IP protocol suite. Each IP address has thousands of "ports", kind of like each post office has thousands of post office boxes, but only 1 street address. What's referred to as a service can be at each port, and can offer different sorts of communication. Now, if NO services are being ran, the IP address is useless. You can't connect to a service that doesn't exist. That's what a protocol is--an agreement of how communication is handled. At this point the only thing that can be done is a denial of service attack where basically you're knocked offline.

2: So, where does that leave you? If you're using windows xp, by default, there aren't any services turned on that can be connected to. Ensure that remote-desktop and remote-assistance are turned off, and stay up to date with windows updates which patches exploits that do allow connections and remote-code execution.

3: Now, when you're browsing the internet and malware (spyware, trojans, etc) is loaded to your computer through exploits (usually active-x in internet explorer), programs can be loaded to your computer which run services, these are typically dubbed "trojans." This does allow remote connections to your computer.

4: Precautions that you can take:

-Anti-spyware programs are far more useful than anti-virus programs these days. Ad-aware, SAS, spybot, etc are good choices. They're only good if they're constantly update.

-Don't use Internet Explorer, use another browser. Also, 99% of this stuff comes from porn. Sex on the internet is like sex in real life--you play too much, you get burned.

-Use a router instead of a hub/switch on your broadband connection. This utilizes NAT, which basically assigns your public IP to the router, and each computer/node behind the router has an internal IP. This can really stop a lot of shit from happening. You can't connect to what you can't see.

-Updates. Use MS update for windows/office, and update all of your anti-whatever programs.

-Use a non-administrative authority account when browsing the internet. Make sure your Administrator account on windows does have a password... a good one. Any software you run-even viruses you don't know that your running have the same priviledges as the account you're using.

-Have common sense.

Where do I send the bill to? :)

W

-Use a router instead of a hub/switch on your broadband connection. This utilizes NAT, which basically assigns your public IP to the router, and each computer/node behind the router has an internal IP. This can really stop a lot of shit from happening. You can't connect to what you can't see.

This one. Except it sucks having to setup port forwarding.

I would ask you to explain port forwarding, because I know that it's a term that you just heard somewhere, but, we have this thing called google now, which would make my point meaningless.

What can you tell me about the MAC address as related to this topic?

I would ask you to explain port forwarding, because I know that it's a term that you just heard somewhere, but, we have this thing called google now, which would make my point meaningless.

Ever use a p2p program or play an online game with a router? The router basically acts as a firewall; allowing you not to connect to many servers in a game and not connect to many people on p2p (and vice versa of course). In order to get rid of this, you need to set up port forwarding. It's not that difficult of a concept to understand and know if you live outside of the West Virginia woods.

What can you tell me about the MAC address as related to this topic?

The MAC address is basically a serial number to a piece of hardware, that is stored digitally. Your motherboard has a different MAC address than your Network card, etc. It's not really used for much in the world of tcp/ip networking, but yes, the MAC address of the hardware can be found using ARP... no point in finding it unless they're trying to prove you do something with that particular network card.

Some home networks can be setup to only allow connections from certain MAC addresses, this is particularly useful when trying to keep people from stealing your internet access by cracking WEP keys.

Ever use a p2p program or play an online game with a router? The router basically acts as a firewall; allowing you not to connect to many servers in a game and not connect to many people on p2p (and vice versa of course). In order to get rid of this, you need to set up port forwarding. It's not that difficult of a concept to understand and know if you live outside of the West Virginia woods.

The "router acting as a firewall" isn't the why port forwarding is needed, the NAT (creating a local, hidden, subnet) is an interference to packet routing to particular nodes. Yes, most of what you said is true, but you have no idea why it's in place, or how it works. You're essentially just posting to talk, you have no relevant information to give.

Does surfing with the likes of www.guardster.com help guard your info as they claim or is it a bunch of hype?

Does surfing with the likes of www.guardster.com help guard your info as they claim or is it a bunch of hype?

Yep... or you can create an AOL account for free and use their proxies. Same thing. To any web server you hit, it'll appear you're coming from that proxy rather than your home connection.

Either one is going to slow traffic a bit.