Tonight, I was on my computer writing an email to a friend and I got a message from my Norton internet security 2007 that something had gone wrong, and Norton had been stopped. So I decided to finish my email before I looked into this.

About 3 minutes later the text that was on my document deleted, and then a whole lot of number ones appeared in its space. After that, I'm not quite sure what it said, but it said something about the president and something about death, it was like someone was sitting next to me typing it into my computer.

I was really freaked out, so I reached down to my computer and pressed the reset button. The computer started fine, and its all ok, but what happened really freaked me out. It was like some hacker was in my system. can anyone please tell me more about what happened to me?

Please help, Will P

Re: Is there a hacker in my comptuer?

You would appear to have been infiltrated. Unplug from the net, save documents and important stuff, format C and clean install. Never install Norton on your machine. Install AVG7 free (www.free.grisoft.com), Spybot (http://www.safer-networking.org/) and avoid 'unsavoury' sites always. If you want to browse questionable sites, boot the pc to a Knoppix disk. This will permit internet usage, but won't write anything to the hard drive, so your setup won't be damaged. Don't forget though that this doesn't mean you can engage in illegal activities with impunity, as all usage is logged by your ISP, so if you do the wrong thing it can still bite you later.

Chris B

p.s. None of this is intended to suggest that you have or would do anything inappropriate, just a general warning to all who might read this.

Why bag Nortons

Hey Chris, what justification do you have to say "Never install Nortons"? Or did you really mean never trust Nortons alone to keep your computer clean? A bit of clarification might help. Cheers, Rod