Yesterday my daughter lowered my firewall so that she could surf her university website and download some music. I had
ELEVEN unauthorised network connections after she had finished.
How do you stop hackers?
You cant! Think of it this way, firewalls are like locks for your PC and locks are only there to keep honest people out.
But there is a lot you can do to minimise the threat of attack. How do you know if you are being hacked? Click on
My Computer then on
My Network. Now double click on
Show PC,s in the Workgroup. If you hav'nt set up a network obviously there wont be any connections. If there are un-authorised connections, dis-connect your internet connection by taking out the modem/ADSL/broadband lead (whichever you have) now the connections are closed right click on an un-authorised connection, select
property,s and disable it. Now re-connect your lead and logon. they should be gone for now.
Additional Prevention
First make sure your firewalls are up, that is
both Windows XP and your anti-virus firewall. If you dont know how to check the windows firewall, click on
My Computer then on
My Network then
Show Network Connections. Now right click on
1394 Connection then on
Properties/Advanced and you will see the check box. Do the same for
Connection to Local Network.
By default, windows XP should have activated them, but check anyway.
There is a free program from the site below that will ask you before it allows registry entries. This is one way to help prevent hackers. Just download, unzip and click on
regprot then on
RPADMIN. http://www.diamondcs.com.au/index.php?page=regprot
If you install lots of programs, games etc, regprot can be a dis-abled with RPADMIN then restarted the same way, its a bit of a pain but still better than all your personal data being hacked.
Alan
How To Prevent Un-Authorised Access To Your Pc (Hackers etc) 
