my computer has decided to change nationalities!
Hello everyone!
In the past day, I have discovered the strangest thing about my computer when it connects to the internet. I am a student with my computer connected to the internet through my university's local network and decided to trace my ip address through one of the online tracing services (a couple of days ago). It traced correctly to my university's domain. This was how I learned how to correctly use ip tracing. (that's not the problem -- only background)
To get to the point, my network has a website that I am supposed to connect to regularly to check on my current status (we are only allowed to use a certain amount of bandwidth per week). In the past, I entered this site, it checked my ip address, and automatically told me what my status is. Today, when I tried to check this site, it told me that I was trying to link using a computer from outside my university's network, and it told me at the top of the page what ip address I was trying to connect with. It said my ip address was 193.224.42.5, and I knew from my previous research that this was very wrong. I traced this ip address using various services (SamSpade, especially) and it told me that my computer is located in Budapest, Hungary. Unfortunately, my computer is in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (that's a long way from Hungary!). How is it possible that my computer thinks it is in Hungary? Has my computer been taken over by a hacker?
Other relevant info that has told me that something is very, very wrong with my computer is that when I enter the address www.google.com, I am automatically taken to www.google.co.hu/, not the US or Canadian site, as usual. I assume that this is Hungarian...
Other notes -- since this strange happening has occurred, my internet access is much slower than it was before. (My network was high speed before...) When I try to log into www.yahoo.com's site with my user name and password, I am told this is not available at the current time. Most strangely, when I try to access info on my university's network, I am told to enter my user id and password before I can get into these on-the-campus server sites (as I am told I am not on campus). I am still on campus just like I have been for the last two months. Therefore, I conclude that my computer has decided to change nationalities (not that that is possible!)
Sorry for the length of this, but I have tried to include all the info anyone out there with lots of computer security knowledge (like those who subscribe to this site) is likely to need to help me (if helping is indeed possible). I just discovered this site a couple of days ago, and decided to become a member then. (I'm in electrical engineering and think I might want to work in network security in the future.) Thank you in advance to anyone who bothered to read this entire posting. If you know what might be happening here and can advise me, thank you ever so much!
Thanks again!
thank you, thank you! (all is well)
Thanks ever so much to h3r3tic and cheyenne1212 for your very prompt replies. You were both right about the proxy server -- somehow my computer had gotten set to that mysterious address in Hungary...
I do have ZoneAlarm installed, but a couple of days ago I was having problems with it. It is now fixed, but I guess during the short time period when it wasn't working back then someone must have hacked into my computer and switched this setting.
After fixing up my proxy settings, all seems well. (The problems I pointed out no longer occur.) Thanks again!
PS -- the step-by-step method of checking my proxy settings was extremely helpful, h3r3tic; without this, I'd probably have to ask how to do this!
