Help! I think someone is monitoring my online activity
    #17617922 - 01/27/13 10:32 AM (10 days, 23 hours ago) 	

My computer was confiscated and returned after a few weeks. I have not re-installed the OS (yet).

On several occasions I noticed unusually high traffic and I'm beginning to suspect that someone is monitoring my online activity.

I'm not involved in any illegal activity of any sort but this is really bugging me.

How can I get more definitive indicators of whether I'm being monitored or not and how to lose the heat?


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InvisiblekoraksM
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Re: Help! I think someone is monitoring my online activity [Re: mellowparty]
    #17618102 - 01/27/13 11:34 AM (10 days, 22 hours ago) 	

High traffic is usually caused by media downloading in the background (incl. torrents) and updates of software (Windows, Adobe, virus definitions).

You could monitor the traffic on your router to see which addresses are frequently communicating with your network.


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Offlineimachavel
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Re: Help! I think someone is monitoring my online activity [Re: koraks]
    #17618760 - 01/27/13 02:27 PM (10 days, 19 hours ago) 	

    Quote:
    koraks said:
    High traffic is usually caused by media downloading in the background (incl. torrents) and updates of software (Windows, Adobe, virus definitions).

    You could monitor the traffic on your router to see which addresses are frequently communicating with your network.



Depending on what manufacturer/model his router is. Question I have for OP is what OS he is using. If windows he can go to cmd and use arp -a or netstat and see how many i.p. addresses he sees in the command window he is con currently connected to. Then again that will just tell him how much traffic he has.

For OP once again if it's windows, hold down ctrl+alt+del and open event viewer and see how many processes/programs are running in the back ground. This may cause your processor to slow down. If you really are being monitored by another D.N.S. address, then re start in safe mode with networking and download if you don't have then run Microsoft security essentials, then malware bytes, then run c cleaner if you found viruses and cleaned the computer of viruses.

You may STILL have a d.n.s. connection with someone on the internet and should go to all the browsers you use, go through settings a bit some have a wrench you click on others have tool bars in the top, etc. You'll eventually find a 'security' tab or a 'privacy' tab or a tab showing network settings or preferences or connection settings. When you see a box that says "use proxy server" un check that box. Although the box can end up checked by using certain mail client/servers or visiting certain sites on the web, it's un necessary to use a proxy server unless you have some direct private connection with a known server over the internet, in which case you'd know since you'd most likely have set up some VPN forwarding scenario anyway.

If you have a virus and someone is searching your files via d.n.s. forwarding, the proxy box on the browsers you use will almost for surely be checked.


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Invisibleteknix
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Re: Help! I think someone is monitoring my online activity [Re: mellowparty] * 1
    #17642558 - 01/31/13 12:08 PM (6 days, 22 hours ago) 	

What router do you have?

    Quote:
    mellowparty said:
    My computer was confiscated and returned after a few weeks. I have not re-installed the OS (yet).

    On several occasions I noticed unusually high traffic and I'm beginning to suspect that someone is monitoring my online activity.

    I'm not involved in any illegal activity of any sort but this is really bugging me.

    How can I get more definitive indicators of whether I'm being monitored or not and how to lose the heat?


Do the netstat and secure router like he said. Best way to secure router is mac authentication with all available IP's assigned.

After you do netstat you can whois the IP from your browser : http://ip-lookup.net/

Also can tracert in the command window to see if the IP responds, IE: tracert 192.168.0.124

If something is suspicious create an exception in the firewall for the suspcious IP and set it to Deny all incomming and outgoing.

A good program to look at your network is wireshark: