Man I hate broadband... Only use it with a firewall... Which mine is broke right now..

I'd say they are downsizing from lack of demand.  By the time you add up the costs of a second phone line and service for dialup, cable and DSl are very affordable.

Keving67

not to be too vulgar but it would be like walking into a gay bar with your pants at your ankles and your hands touching your toes...  You would be open to alot of attacks (hacks)
Nothing to really worry about just download a good firewall and set it up par instructions.

Keving67

In the big cities it may have gone the way of the 50 cent haircut but, here in the sticks that's all we got.

Let me see

Accounts in WINDOWS2K besides the initial one.. There are 6 accounts running on this machine.. I only put in 2 of them..

I have caught Outlook Express SENDING EMAIL TO PEOPLE THAT ARE NOT IN MY ADDRESS BOOKS..
IN THIS LAST INSTANCE I CAUGHT MY COMPUTER SENDING A 64-BIT RSA ENRCYPTED FILE TO SOME AOL ADDRESS. hahahaha

YOU BECOME PART OF THE NETWORK SO YOUR MACHINE IS PARTIALLY USED IN SOME INSTANCES FOR BANDWIDTH TO OTHERS MACHINES.

COMMERCIAL COMPONENTS THAT I NEVER WANTED (READ AS CLASSES AND COMPONENTS)....

Port hacks all the time,  If you are using a firewall you will get an alarm and you can watch when they start at say port 800 and start climbing up the ladder hitting ports that the firewall has blocked.

Let me say for the record that My firewall is broke, this machine has been throughly compromised... When I go to by a new harddrive I am also buying a good firewall and starting from scratch...

My Cable Modem runs all the time even when it has no business doing so...

You are susceptible to every security hole in Win2k, those that Bill Gates and Co. Put in on purpose and those that are truly accidents..

That is why I don't like Broadband...

Ben

EDITED TO ADD: If someone could get Windows Source code I am sure that you would find things in there that would make a spy blush... I sware, you know about scope in programming and access via security levels, but lets face it . I have never SOURCED the WINDOWS MESSAGING SUBSYSTEM, or the KERNAL for windows. SO to be sure I dont' know what all is in there...

Also if you have every programmed in Assembly or Machine language , You can do just about everything you ever dreamed of. Self Modifying code. Sure windows has security features, you can program in function to life every bit off your machines and funnel through the network... What I am getting at is this.... THere is nothing that a programmer can't program into a computer.. I mean you look at the components on the machine and most of them are accessible on some address and INTerrupt... I can switch my DRAM refresh rate below 60 cycles per second and my memory will no longer keep agood enough charge to remember everything that is them... They say windows is secure,  I know for a fact that from a users/programmers point of view Windows is as open as Seeking Virgin..

Ben

Only prob with DSL/Cable is non-stop port scans and unauthorized accesses to your PC.  Get a good firewall (software or hardware) if you want to protect your system.  You also need a good virus scanner so you can regularly check the PC for trojans.

They might have implimented a rotating trunk line. Where they only publish 2 numbers, but when you call in, it gets rotated to a fresh line.

Now back to the firewall...

DON'T USE A SOFTWARE BASED FIREWALL.

Again, and again, I recommend a linksys, netgear or something between your cable/dsl modem and your computer. Hell if you want, set up a Linux machine with firewall software. Make it, YOUR man in the middle. Or even better yet, put a honey pot up.

[url]http://www.nsa.gov[/url]

The gov actually did something you can use. Scroll down and find the NSA's recommendations for securing windows 2000.

Enjoy.

(btw, you'll be secure to everyone except them, sincei it's a government conspiracy to get you to open your machine wide up to snooping feds.)

I second that:  

1)  Get a good router that does NAT (Network Address Translation); that means that your computer does not have a globally accessible IP address.  These are usually called a "Residential Broadband Gateway" or something similar.  That stops your inbound attacks.  

2)  Use a software firewall (I use Norton Internet Security) to determine what nasty programs on your computer are trying to send information to somebody else on the internet.  A lot of stuff you download will try to phone home and send God-knows-what information.  With the software firewall, you can see this happening and put the smack down!

none, just be sure to get the Ethernet modem.
you will need to buy a DSL router and a network card for your PC(if it doesnt already have one)

the advantage of this setup is that the router has a hardware firewall in it. those are very difficult to break. even more so with the home ones because the holes change by the microsecond(more or less).

the hardware ones work like this

you type www.ar15.com into your browser, your PC knowing its internet connection is somewhere beyond the network card sends it out there. the router gets the request for www.ar15.com, rewrites the request to make the internet think IT wants it(removes your internal ip and writes its ip on there) and the router assigns a random port to the packet. that port remains open until the data comes back(or until a timer runs out of a few seconds).

each click on a link or webpage  you visit  generates a new request and the proccess is done all over again.
easy way to understand it
IP = Telephone number
Port = Person they caller wants to reach.

of course the real descriptions are far more techincal and loaded. but that should suffice.

the wirepath would be DSL Modem - Router - PC.
the DSL modem is hooked into the Router on what is labeled a "WAN port" the PC Network card is then hooked up to the routers LAN ports.(note : the network card must be installed in the pc for it to be useful)

program the router with your user/pass and viola your online.
--edit--
Benjamin is overly paranoid but yes that crap does happen. however with these nice routers and their hardware based firewalls. my server with firewall software has never ever seen an attack or even a port touched that was not specifily opened for a specific use. this is because the attack has to be EXTREAMLY lucky to even see it. not only does he have to get my ip (which is dynamic so it changes), but he has to guess the proper port at the proper time. and since the ports change from moment to moment to random ports(if there is a constant connection like IRC) even if he does get a responce from my pc on a portscann by the time he has a chance to even respond to it its changed again.

so as you can tell these devices are well put together.

just be sure to change the admin password on these. you would be surprised how many people do not change them. if you dont change it the invader can access and change your routers settings. (if you leave remote admin's on).

all in all my network is very secure from outside invaders that hit the firewall. now those damn viruss/worms/trojans that sneak in on emails are usually caught by norton antivirus.

Yep, the only way to go. You can't download the router for free though, you have to pay money for it.