Old Project Avalon Forum (ARCHIVE) - View Single Post

10-14-2008, 02:44 PM

I have to say WOW!!! This thread has picked up very well in one day, and I'm very pleased.
Please let me relate a story:
I met a friend around 2002. He called me out of the blue and I didn't know him from a bar of soap. He introduced himself as a fellow X-Box and Playstation 2 console modder. He asked if I could help him out in repairing a few Playstations, to which I agreed.
We met at my place and really got to know each other.
I found out later that he was a whizz with PC's. I thought he was just good at keeping them in tune, as some people have got a real good knack at sussing out PC problems, but little did I know how deep his involvement in PC's really was.
It wasn't long when one day we were just talking generally that I complained to him about all the spam e-mails I was getting, particularly from one web site (I can't remember which) i had visited.
He asked me to show him on the PC, to which I did.
He then started fooling around on the keyboard and plugged in a USB stick and activated a program on it. I didn't have a clue what he was doing. After around 10 or so minutes, he told me he caused that web site to crash. So he let me on the PC and sure enough, when I tried getting onto that web site, it came up with the 401 error. To say the least, I was extremely impressed. He told me a story to which I won't put on here, but let me just say that in his earlier days he and a few others got caught in a major way in regards to hacking and was put in prison over it. For anyone wanting to know what he did, then bring it up when we meet or talk on the telephone.
Since I was so impressed at what he'd done, I asked him to give me some more examples, to which he did.
He said that in the next couple of days, he will break into two of my Yahoo and one Hotmail accounts and send e-mails to each account. In fact it was just the next day that I found that my Hotmail account sent an e-mail to one of my Yahoo accounts and vice-versa, all with his signature. Once again I was impressed, but at the same time I was a tad worried also. If a hacker of his caliber could do what he could, imagine someone trained to do this, lets say a department of the FBI, MI5, ASIO etc.

My whole point to the above is this:
No matter how careful you want to be in regards to your activities on the internet, if the government want to know about you they can easily find out. Its an extremely difficult thing to do to remain annonomous, they can easily find you no matter what.
I realize our government may be trying to monitor its population by surveillance via CCTV cameras, but how else do we meet up???
We're not being terrorists, so I don't think we need to worry about being spied on. If so, so what??? We are just having a get together.
The last thing is us being overly paranoid, that's the gist of what I'm getting at. It would be much different if we were under Martial Law but we are not. So PLEASE DON'T PANIC.
Sorry for the long winded essay.
Take care all and peace be with you.
Best regards,
John
Johnno aka DarkMatter

10-14-2008, 02:44 PM	#150
Johnno Guest Posts: n/a	Re: Melbourne/Victoria I have to say WOW!!! This thread has picked up very well in one day, and I'm very pleased. Please let me relate a story: I met a friend around 2002. He called me out of the blue and I didn't know him from a bar of soap. He introduced himself as a fellow X-Box and Playstation 2 console modder. He asked if I could help him out in repairing a few Playstations, to which I agreed. We met at my place and really got to know each other. I found out later that he was a whizz with PC's. I thought he was just good at keeping them in tune, as some people have got a real good knack at sussing out PC problems, but little did I know how deep his involvement in PC's really was. It wasn't long when one day we were just talking generally that I complained to him about all the spam e-mails I was getting, particularly from one web site (I can't remember which) i had visited. He asked me to show him on the PC, to which I did. He then started fooling around on the keyboard and plugged in a USB stick and activated a program on it. I didn't have a clue what he was doing. After around 10 or so minutes, he told me he caused that web site to crash. So he let me on the PC and sure enough, when I tried getting onto that web site, it came up with the 401 error. To say the least, I was extremely impressed. He told me a story to which I won't put on here, but let me just say that in his earlier days he and a few others got caught in a major way in regards to hacking and was put in prison over it. For anyone wanting to know what he did, then bring it up when we meet or talk on the telephone. Since I was so impressed at what he'd done, I asked him to give me some more examples, to which he did. He said that in the next couple of days, he will break into two of my Yahoo and one Hotmail accounts and send e-mails to each account. In fact it was just the next day that I found that my Hotmail account sent an e-mail to one of my Yahoo accounts and vice-versa, all with his signature. Once again I was impressed, but at the same time I was a tad worried also. If a hacker of his caliber could do what he could, imagine someone trained to do this, lets say a department of the FBI, MI5, ASIO etc. My whole point to the above is this: No matter how careful you want to be in regards to your activities on the internet, if the government want to know about you they can easily find out. Its an extremely difficult thing to do to remain annonomous, they can easily find you no matter what. I realize our government may be trying to monitor its population by surveillance via CCTV cameras, but how else do we meet up??? We're not being terrorists, so I don't think we need to worry about being spied on. If so, so what??? We are just having a get together. The last thing is us being overly paranoid, that's the gist of what I'm getting at. It would be much different if we were under Martial Law but we are not. So PLEASE DON'T PANIC. Sorry for the long winded essay. Take care all and peace be with you. Best regards, John Johnno aka DarkMatter