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Could I have been hacked?

16 years ago

I was going through my recycle bin and noticed a file for every name of my outlook email folders such as send, delete,and so forth. The file was made and deleted at the same time yesterday and I did not do this. Could I have been hacked and information sent out to a hacker or would updates from Outlook put the files in the recycle bin? I do need to get a good firewall put in but I can not afford one right now. Any free good firewalls out there ? TIA montana_jan

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Comments (8)

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Christopher Nelson Wallcovering and Painting
16 years ago
look here and pick

Here is a link that might be useful: furewalls
owbist
16 years ago
Ian certainly use Christopher's link to select a firewall. Zonealarm is probably the most used free one. I used Comodo for a long while, it is good but requires a little more user input I found.

You might want to turn this thread into a total security set of questions for your computer.

I suggest that because something seems to have been allowed to set up on your computer in the first place. All safety programs can be found that are free. You should seriously consider - besides an anti virus program which I hope you have - a couple of anti malware programs. These need to be updated of course and ran every so often. The free programs usually are not automatic, they require you to manually update and run. This is not difficult.

If by chance you are using AdAwareSE personal I believe support for it will end December 30th. I found the new AdAware2007 to need considerably more resources to run so I got rid of that and replaced it with Superantispyware. I also run AVG anti spyware, AVG anti rootkit, Spybot Search & Destroy, Spywareblaster and BOClean. Not all on the same machine of course but I do keep 3 on each computer.
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montana_jan
Original Author
16 years ago
thanks , I will add what I need this morning. You people are great! Montana_Jan
daylilydayzed
16 years ago
I can recommend a free firewall , Ashampoo Firewall . It is the one I use.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ashampoo Firewall
mikie_gw
16 years ago
Thought I was here before... must have forgot to press Submit.

Outlook Express compacts the email/folders every 100 opens, or closes. They put a back_up copy of everything into the Recycle bin before doing the cleaning, just incase they screw up the process and lose all your mail. Which they do on some computer configurations.
montana_jan
Original Author
16 years ago
thanks Mikie-- I am so glad to hear this! I think that is what happened. I did download the needed items, so I am glad it all worked out the way it did. Thanks again to everyone that posted suggestions. Montana_Jan
Bill_zone6
16 years ago
Had problems (very slow download) using Zone Alarm with Vista Home. Have been using PC Tools Firewall Plus (free) with good success. Believe Windows didn't like Zone Alarm even with Windows Firewall turned off.
mikie_gw
16 years ago
Vista comes with a much praised firewall. Rather amazing the configurations available actually.

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