Thought I should regale everyone with my unfortunate experiences -- I use dial-up networking for internet access, using various free ISP numbers depending on how busy the system is. I use Compuserve (for which I pay monthly) as my main mail client, and access this service only twice a day for no more than 30 seconds or max 1 minute at a time. If I go over 5 hours monthly then I have to pay CServe for each minute on line. I recently had problems accessing CServe, which refused to recognise my password. They gave me a new password, then told me that according to their activity logs I had been on line for 1840 minutes over two days. I hadn't even been in the house that weekend, and there is no-one else here to use the PC. On investigation we discovered that people had been dialling in from Frankfurt and Dublin, sometimes simultaneously and for long overlapping periods. Obviously, someone had scanned one of my ports, got hold of my Compuserve ID and pwd and was having a fine old time giving it away to all and sundry and clocking up the hours on my account. Then they obviously changed my pwd so I couldn't get access myself. Cutting a long story short, the onus is now on me to prove that I wasn't online at all those times so I don't have to pay the UKP100 + that were clocked up! This I can do by submitting the logs of all my phone calls from my telco -- but it's going to be a long business and it's a real pain. The aim of this post is to warn everyone that even with occasional internet access using DUN, h*ckers can get in and steal info from your hard disk. The general opinion is that a firewall is only needed if one has a permanent DSL connection, but I'm darn well going to install one straight away. So, which firewall is to be recommended for an ordinary home standalone PC? Black-Ice, ZoneAlarm, Proxomitron -- there have been lots of postings on this list about the pros and cons of some of these in the past, but I'd like to know the latest thoughts from you guys. Thanks. Virginia Virginia Da Costa - Thatched Cottage - Kent - UK [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Net-Tamer V 1.09.2 - Test Drive ============= PCWorks Mailing List ================= Don't see your post? Check our posting guidelines & make sure you've followed proper posting procedures, http://pcworkers.com/rules.htm Contact list owner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Unsubscribing and other changes: http://pcworkers.com =====================================================
