Uhm (I know I should be in bed - I was there but I got bored so I came back here.) This doesn't really belong in the Photography forum, but I don't really know where else to go with it. I was browsing through the Poser gallery when my Zonealarm started picking up things like these.. The firewall has blocked Internet access to your computer (TCP Port 1080) from 209.58.53.51 (TCP Port 1625). I did an IP whois, and it gave me the info about the person's ISP, this is my result. New Com (NETBLK-NEWCOM-2) Australia St. Sakhra Building, 2nd Flr., Raouche Beirut, LB The coordinator to contact used a Hotmail email address - something I find more than a little suspicious! An ISP would definitely have their own domain! Not really sure where this would belong..Complaints and Debate? I'm pretty sure it must have come from Renderosity, as I didn't have any other programs open at the time....then again I get all kinds of lameass people trying to hack me because I am an operator on one of Undernet's biggest channels. (For those of you who are IRC users..well you'll probably know what I mean :P) Just not exactly sure where to go with this..... It's not exactly very photography related.. :-) Back to bed.... ~M~

not the first time i hear about rampant scanning of ports while people are at renderosity. i kind of disregarded this up until now, since i don't have any nuclear secrets on my computer, but it's starting to disturb me. perhaps a firewall program is in order. more knowledgeable people, please advise, i'd hate to be a hacker's prey.

Could someone please explain this to me in very simple english? You mean when we are online here at RR, people are hacking our systems? How, technically and slowly, and what are they after do you suppose? and why?

Mmmmmm I suck at explaining things like these.... :/ I don't know jack about hacking and how it's done, really, but I know people are sort of trying to find their way into other people's computers to cause whatever destruction they can....normally it's not really done to random individuals. And you can be damn sure people are trying to hack renderosity systems, as RR is a very big and popular website. Most attempts fail, fortunately. I don't know why people get such a kick out of hacking...trying to break through supposedly waterproof security system just for the sake of it seems pretty lame to me. What they're after, why they do it, how they do it, is pretty much beyond me. I don't know an awful lot about those things. Getting a program like ZoneAlarm (which basically works as a firewall) is almost a necessity when browsing the net...I wouldn't want to be without. ~M~

Yeah, as far as I know real hackers don't normally try to hack individuals. But big websites can often be an easy target....the bigger the challenge, the more people are trying. Hmm I've seen some funny things done by hackers. Quite harmless, but nonetheless illegal. Like on a Norwegian newspaper's site, somebody had replaced the logo with a similar logo, but with men peeing all over it. They got caught and got in sooooo much trouble... ~M~

This is something I've ever even thought of until now - Zonealarm is now up & running on my system.......seems happy to be there...! I'd hate to lose my international spy secrets from my top secret job in MI7.....LOL!!!

Hahahah..good on ya. Hey, everybody must be online right now..isn't it ridiculously late in Europe? It's nearly 1pm here in NZ and we're like ahead of just about everybody! :-)

Dudes, i have an ancient AMD-300 Mhz with dial-up connection, it's slow as hell as it is, with ZoneAlarm it slows down to a crawl!! Is there an alternative??

its very exciting actually I was thinking the same thing, we are all yapping away....1p in NZ, its what here, 8:14p, it must be for mikey 1 am....so, to all a good night, and keep up the yacking/yacking/hacking...okay I have to go eat raspberries

How on earth can ZoneAlarm slow down your connection? For me it speeded everything up because it blocked all those annoying ping attacks... Hmm, yacking, hacking...Sounds like Weird Al's All About The Pentiums! Heheh. Goodnight everyone :-) It's night time here too now....we're almost the first people in the world to go to bed. Teehee. I won't tell you what just happened in the 12+ hours you haven't lived yet :P ~M~

I may be inclined to agree, MarshyPops.... it may be one big co-oncidence, but I've just logged on to my ISP in record time! I'm talking about 30 seconds quicker....doesn't sound much, but that cuts it down to the normal time! Kewl... :-)