I found out someone was spoofing my IP address at EZboards & making all kinds of hideous posts using my IP address as the source (but apparently did not have my account information-- just the address). I use AOL as my ISP. Speak to me like you are explaining things to an 8 year old kid:
What, if anything, can I do to prevent this from happening in the future?
What are the risks to my system, if they are able to do this could they be reading my personal and financial infornmation on the system?
Is there anyway to catch them or “prove” that it was spoofed?
What should I be worried about? What would you do from here?
The moderators of the board are aware and have sent me the “are you SURE it isn’t someone in your house” e-mails that REALLY helped settle me down :rolleyes: Anyway, thanks for any thoughts!
Pretty sure that’s the case; with most ‘home’ ISPs, you’ll be assigned an IP address when you connect (and it might even be changed during a session); it will be in a certain range, but that’s about it - it’s quite unlikely that you’d be assigned the same address every time and it is extremely lilkely that tomorrow, someone else will be assigned the address you’re using now.
No; that’s the opposite of what we’re saying. It needn’t have come from your computer at all; most ISPs have a block of IP addresses that they assign first-come, first served each time a user starts their computer and connects to the internet - you’ll most likely be getting a different IP address each time you log on, and so will everybody else.
What you are saying is that an AOL dynamic IP address is in no way necessarily connected to my computer and the moderator is nutty to point the finger at me?
That would also obviate the need for me to take further security measures … if so, thanks for everything you two
I’d be very surprised if AOL has given you a static IP address.
I’d say that rather than being nutty, (and this is nothing more than my opinion) the moderator thinks it was you that posted the comments and is using technical bullshit to try to frighten you into confessing (which you obviously aren’t about to do if it wasn’t you).
If they have two posts genuinely from you on their board, from the same IP address and, say, five minutes apart and the suspect one is in between these two, with the same IP address, then I can fully understand how they would think it had to come from your computer - there are probably innocent explanations (at least innocent from your POV) for such things, but their suspicion would not be unreasonable in this case.