136 DEAR HACKER

136 DEAR HACKER

This is getting a bit silly. Your phone rings once and you’re ready to declare war on whoever dared to dial your number? We agree that telemarketers are a royal pain and should be dealt with harshly when they annoy people. But this could have been an innocent wrong number, something that used to not be a big deal in the days before Caller ID. If you get an actual sales pitch attached to a phone number, let us know and we’ll print the entire number. And before anyone starts to scan out all the numbers to fill in the above Xs, the number was disconnected when we called it. We can only speculate as to why.

Dear 2600: Point me in the right direction for some software programs. The rea-

son I am asking is that I am having some trouble with a person in a newsgroup that is “spoofing” me. I have actually been able to take the information back to the ISP, but when I make a complaint to the ISP they ignore it even with complete headers of the messages.

As it stands I am being hit with threats from other posters about posts made from this person “spoofing” me and them thinking that it is me doing it. I can live with this if I can get this person to stop doing this, but again the ISP refuses to do anything.

Now I have seen some people who are able to actually get the names and addresses of people through their posts and this is what I would like to be able to do. No, I will not use this to attack this person, as all

I want to do is send them an email through an anonymous remailer just to warn them I know who they are and what they are doing and ask them to cease. I know this sounds “ farfetched” but I really have no desire to harm anyone. I just want this person to cease.

I have asked some questions about this in chat rooms and even the alt. binaries.2600 newsgroup, only to be laughed at and be told that if I asked such a stupid question again, my personal information would

be posted all over the net. Personally, I don’t see what I actually did wrong. Nor why I was being treated like I just demanded the keys to the Internet backbone. So far what I have learned about tracing an ISP I learned at geektools.com and by using smartwhosis.

THE CHALLENGES OF LIFE AS A HACKER

Now you see why I would like to know how to actually get the name and address of this person so I can get him to stop. Heck, I would even send you the headers if you would give me this information just to prove to you that I am not out to hurt anyone.

A little help here, please? Some names of the programs that do what

I ask would be great as I could locate them on my own. Thanks guys, your magazine is great!

Daniel The Internet is comprised of all kinds of people ranging from morons to geniuses.

And there are very few among these who don’t enjoy watching reactions when certain personalities clash. When you ask for help, you will invariably get mocked by people who either want to provoke more of a reaction or who simply like to be obnoxious. Many times this turns the original poster into an hysterical lunatic and their progression into eventual institutionalization becomes a source of entertain- ment all around the globe. You can avoid all of this by not taking it all too seriously or, at the very least, not appearing to take it too seriously. If you find out about a fake post that went out somewhere, post as yourself and make it clear that this wasn’t you and you’d appreciate it if someone would help you figure out who it actually was. Depending on software and methods used, this is usually not very dif- ficult and someone in all likelihood will step forward. If they don’t, there’s no point in making an issue of it. An ISP has better things to do than get involved in some- thing relatively minor like fake postings. But there are plenty of people out there who will lend a hand if you don’t come off as a nut. And if you show no outward signs of being upset at what’s going on, whoever is behind it will eventually get bored since there’s no longer any entertainment value.

Dear 2600:

I am being stalked by a computer! A computer driven by a cowardly poor excuse of a man. When I lived in the apartment above his, he used sound to drive me crazy and vibration to make me go to the bathroom. He would go in his bathroom when I was in mine and tap some signal letting me know he was listening and at a later level he would leave feces at my apartment door.