On showing internet adresses.

Hi


About showing your url when posting. This is bad and it could easily be abused.


One or two years ago at least two programs arrived that basically let you control another persons computer without their knowledge. The dominant ones were Back Orifice and Netbus. Getting infected with this virus-like (it wasn't really a virus, rather a trojan) program was fairly straight forward. A friend might send you the program or you might download it by mistake from the internet. You run it and it just flashes and you think, "Another stupid program that crashes", but the trojan is inside your system. Once infected a hacker (and this is requires no great skill nor computer knowledge) can now see your cards at any time, he could even press buttons for you. I'm fairly certain that I have no such trojans but then again I'm a computer geek and have a good handle on what is going on inside my computer.


A severe problem is that most (if not all) operating systems have security holes in them. At the very least a hacker could attack your computer so that your net access is shut down. There might even be more severe security holes that I'm unaware of. Nuking a computer once you have the url/ip of it is not hard, more or less any 11 year old can do it.


This is not a huge problem if you have a dynamically allocated IP, whoever wants to attack you computer would have to search a couple of thousands of IP addresses.


For users (like me) with static IP addresses this is a pretty big issue. A malicious person (who for some reason figured out my paradise nick) could easily attack my computer causing it to freeze in the middle of a hand.


Basically, posting URL/IP addresses is very very bad thing. If you want to be able to track that the people posting either log it in a way that is unattainable to the users or chop up the address in some way.


Sincerely, Andreas


P.s. This is posted using a proxy, I trust 2+2 with my IP but not every 2+2-poster/lurker. D.s.

Of course if you are really worried about trojan horse programs like these and other virus type programs you could (and should) install a firewall, either hardware or software. Anyone with a high speed internet connection that has a static IP should use a firewall of some sort. Even if someone did get you to install a program like backoriface they couldn't connect if your firewall prevented outside connections.


Bottom line, use a firewall. It's like a digital condom.

Firewalls are good, but I they do not solve everything. You would still be vulnerable to attacks. I suppose a big badass commercial firewall might do the trick. But thoose are commercial and expensive.


I'm not worried for myself about having trojans installed, but I'm not sure that all posters are computer geeks like me. I'm just pointing out that posting IP addresses is bad. Why give the hackers a clue as to what IP's they should try to attack?


Sincerely, Andreas

Just checking which of my addresses is showing...


...and Mason: You guys should install a login/password system.


Mark

These certainly echo my concerns. But the issue is this.........


If you dont want your URL posted-- then- don't post. Simple as that.


Unfortunately- its apparently not that simple..........


As- when one posted on August 16th (just as an example)..........

their URL wasn't shown.


So- one could've been comfortable posting-- even if they wouldn't have posted if they knew their URL was going to be shown.


Unfortunately- the URL's now show on past posts as well- which weren't there when the post was originally offered. This is just flat wrong- and leaves the poster no option-- except not to post at all. Not an option 2+2 would endorse im sure.