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AIM hacked???

I opened up AOL Instant Messanger just now, and my entire buddy list was gone, all that was there were two buddy lists. The first one said, "I know what you did" the second one, "did last summer!" Was I hacked into or something??? I have dial-up! Why would anyone hack into a computer with dial-up? Did this happen to anybody else?

__________________
-Bernie

"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared'.
-Dan Quayle

Nothing happened to me...

I checked some other screen names that I don't use, they weren't effected. I put up a poll about whether dial-up customers need firewalls here.

__________________
-Bernie

"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared'.
-Dan Quayle

If a friend (or enemy) figured out your password, they would be able to modify your Buddy List since the data is stored in AOL's servers, not your local machine.

__________________

God bless America, my home sweet home...

To further build on Mark's comments...

If your AIM handle is well-advertised, then it's like anything else that requires a username and password... someone will try to hack into your AIM account, not your physical computer. All one needs is a copy of AIM and they're good to go.

Of course, if someone has access to your computer (or if you installed and used AIM on a public computer), then no firewall can help you there. Best way to overcome that liability is not to have AIM save your password and not to auto-log you on. And in the case of the public computer scenario, I don't think we need to go into details on that.

And: If your AIM password was pretty simple, programmatic-wise, it's time to change it to something longer and complicated.

No one else knows my password and it is not at all easy to break.

__________________
-Bernie

"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared'.
-Dan Quayle

Well, did you kill anyone last summer?

__________________
We're all naked if you turn us inside out.
-David Byrne

Not that anyone would know about.

__________________
-Bernie

"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared'.
-Dan Quayle

Oops. You didn't hear anything. Or read anything.

__________________
-Bernie

"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared'.
-Dan Quayle

After you launch your buddylist, see if you have a program running called buddylist.exe (press CTRL-ALT-DEL and check the list).

I know there is a virus called buddylist.exe that will lauch with AOL and log keystrokes then will mail your password to others....I'm not sure if it affects AIM or not.

Hope it's nothing serious..........

__________________
Ryan Clayton
www.girlandgeek.com
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