Oh, the current difficulties have been with my computer. :)
Whilst I still really dislike the new Blogger interface, and posting does take considerably longer, I decided I may as well stay with the devil you know.
I've convinced myself I have a bot on my computer, as for the past week or so the lights on my router have been flashing like billyoh when they didn't used to.
Nearly every time now I open a page, the lights flash, the page loads, then the lights start flashing again for several seconds.
The router is in my eyeline and it definitely didn't used to do this.
I've checked the activity and quite large amounts of data are being sent and received. It's happening now as I type this.
I've run AVG anti virus, Malwarebytes, Superantispyware and Spybot and there's absolutely nothing showing, but still the bloody lights flash!
I've been reading about TCPView which apparently tells you what's what, but after watching a couple of tutorials on YouTube, I decided it was beyond my understanding.
The performance of my computer doesn't seem to have been affected, but I'm concerned that someone of something has access to it.
Or maybe I'm being paranoid. I just don't understand these things.
Also, for the first time, I checked today how much data I'm using, and in the course of my daily trawl trying to find crap to post here, I used almost 1GB, which seems an awful lot.
I do visit a fair few sites, mind, but it still seems a lot.
If your router's wireless I'd make sure it's encrypted or if your just using the wired connection, just turn the wireless off. Just in case a neighbour's pleased to be nicking your connection. On the bot front if it only flickers when you're typing it sounds more like a keylogger than a bot. But to be honest, you've already tried some of the best options for detecting these things.
I'll have a better think later on.. Today I'm taking a bunch of students to a particle accelerator. Oh dear.
One simple way to tell if someone might be nicking your wireless connection would be to look if the lights are flashing like mad when your own computer's turned off.
You could try using a different web browser (say opera) on the off-chance it's some crapware that's decided to be a toolbar on your current web browser.
If you've already installed tcpview, I'd reboot the computer, start tcpview and sort by "rcvd bytes". I'd then start using your new web browser. I would expect the browser to very quickly be the top of the list. I'm constantly amazed at how much traffic I generate by just titting about online these days.
If the 1GB traffic you mentioned was download only I wouldn't really worry about it. Things like flash, java, windows update, windows media player and a whole host of other things update themselves in the background. It may simply be that they've decided to phone home and see if there are updates.
PS: The accelerator was fun. Robots, radiation and herding students.
10 comments:
And now for something completly different.
Arborath, have you adjusted to the blogg interface or are you still considering moving?
Thanks for all the fun and shocks :)
Oh, the current difficulties have been with my computer. :)
Whilst I still really dislike the new Blogger interface, and posting does take considerably longer, I decided I may as well stay with the devil you know.
When stuck between two evils, I always like to pick the one I haven't tried before.
If you'd like some geeky help, it's what I make my living doing and I dare say no small number of your readers too.
Cheers Ratz!
The older I get, the less I like the unknown.
Well, computer-wise anyway. :)
Do you understand bots?
I've convinced myself I have a bot on my computer, as for the past week or so the lights on my router have been flashing like billyoh when they didn't used to.
Nearly every time now I open a page, the lights flash, the page loads, then the lights start flashing again for several seconds.
The router is in my eyeline and it definitely didn't used to do this.
I've checked the activity and quite large amounts of data are being sent and received. It's happening now as I type this.
I've run AVG anti virus, Malwarebytes, Superantispyware and Spybot and there's absolutely nothing showing, but still the bloody lights flash!
I've been reading about TCPView which apparently tells you what's what, but after watching a couple of tutorials on YouTube, I decided it was beyond my understanding.
The performance of my computer doesn't seem to have been affected, but I'm concerned that someone of something has access to it.
Or maybe I'm being paranoid. I just don't understand these things.
Also, for the first time, I checked today how much data I'm using, and in the course of my daily trawl trying to find crap to post here, I used almost 1GB, which seems an awful lot.
I do visit a fair few sites, mind, but it still seems a lot.
Any advice would be much appreciated! :)
If your router's wireless I'd make sure it's encrypted or if your just using the wired connection, just turn the wireless off. Just in case a neighbour's pleased to be nicking your connection. On the bot front if it only flickers when you're typing it sounds more like a keylogger than a bot. But to be honest, you've already tried some of the best options for detecting these things.
I'll have a better think later on.. Today I'm taking a bunch of students to a particle accelerator. Oh dear.
Thanks for your advice, Ratz!
I have nothing wirelessly connected to the router as setting up wireless is also beyond my abilities! :)
I don't know if it's encrypted or not.
The lights don't appear to flicker as I type. Just randomly.
Have fun with your particle accelerator!
One simple way to tell if someone might be nicking your wireless connection would be to look if the lights are flashing like mad when your own computer's turned off.
You could try using a different web browser (say opera) on the off-chance it's some crapware that's decided to be a toolbar on your current web browser.
If you've already installed tcpview, I'd reboot the computer, start tcpview and sort by "rcvd bytes". I'd then start using your new web browser. I would expect the browser to very quickly be the top of the list. I'm constantly amazed at how much traffic I generate by just titting about online these days.
If the 1GB traffic you mentioned was download only I wouldn't really worry about it. Things like flash, java, windows update, windows media player and a whole host of other things update themselves in the background. It may simply be that they've decided to phone home and see if there are updates.
PS: The accelerator was fun. Robots, radiation and herding students.
Cheers for that Ratz!
From time to time the wireless light flashes, but not often.
I've been using a mixture of IE9, Firefox and Chrome, all with the same random flashing.
I'll have a proper play with TCPView over the weekend.
Glad you had fun at the particle accelerator!
Any joy? I only realised recently that tcpview monitors per process as opposed to per application so the totals are likely to be a bugger to see.
I'm hoping to to have a proper look tomorrow or Sunday.
If I can track down where data is arriving from or going to, that'll be a start.
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