young girl intimidated

[Palemoon]

My thoughts are lets the cops deal with it before you even touch the computer. If you do not know just what you are looking for or what logs may be about your own attemots to help could erase or alter inportant records that can be used as means to build a case against this person. Best bet while I hear about the Aunt and you a cousin, time to get Mom & Dad into the picture.

I'm still haing a bit challange here some parts of what you ask are not adding up at least for me. In general to many 3rd persons in the question. Just me and again if you don't know what your doing leave it alone for the people that do know.

[somac112]

I understand where everybody's coming from and I too feel you should report to the authorities. Since he is out of state, you will have to go to the feds for help, since the local police cant cross state borders.

Second, if you can get the machine running again I would first make sure I was offline for a while, even if you have another connection. Later, I would go back on the Internet, which would automatically change my IP address, making it safe to be away from this son of a b****. I would get a new sn just to be careful and run virus scans periodically.

Somac112

[MrT]

Everyone's right, but if it was me I would be searching your user files and the chat program, if you have the PC's admin acount. There is notheing that you could do wrong, if you don't do the following: go on the internet, delete anything, install anything new, exicute any program, except the wordpad and or text document...BUT that's me, and you don't sound very sure of yourself. I say leave it to the cops, then after that come back here and I will tell you everything to look for...but really it's the FBI V.S. a small punk hacker(well I think).

[Terr]

Just be aware that a true sicko might not give a picture of himself, so that's not a for-sure identification. But yeah, don't handle it on your own.

If the police or FBI say that they will NOT follow up on it, get their reasoning for not following up on it in writing. Just in case. *THEN* may go try some conservative vigilantism.

[intruder]

i agree with kezil .. u can do that.. let the FBI people test the computer for any kind of traces.. and if u have already disturbed the computer then do one thing just check if there is any serious damage or not.. then scan it for viruses.. and then just install some firewall ... so that this dosen't happen again...

[drew_1791]

he wouldnt have to ask for her ip if they were using aim, he could get it when they connnected to send images, it could have been sub7. and just had the images binded as an executeable so when she ran the program it showed the pictures. go ahead and download the cleaner at www.moosoft.com but you are probably giong to have to delete some registry keys in addition to that.

[Fakeboy]

Install a Firewall, Install an OS with a NFTS File System, Get another ISP other than AOL, and Contact the IFCC and Local Police Department and provide them with the username, date & time.

[n01100110]

He Probably Infected her system with a Trojan , prior before anything started.So he prolly just used it as a secret weapon in case she failed to comply with him.He probably formatted the Hard Drive.Try Using a boot up disk to see if u still have your hd.
-N

Well , Maybe the girl still remembers his sn or whatever , so then you can get a few of your buddies to show him a piece of your mind. (thats what i would do .)
-N

[Vorlin]

For those that think the person should install an NTFS-fs oriented OS, try to remember that this person(s) is/are not very capable (judging from their posts). The problem here is 2-fold.

1: this niece (supposedly) was just talking to this guy. Now, I don't know about you, but the 13 year old girl that was found dead a month or so ago had six screen names, of which 3 of them were 'promisciuous' to say the least. Not to say that the niece in question was doing whatever, but realize that's an option and she might've been "talking" to this guy, playing the role of the ODT. She could've gotten in over her head and "he" wasn't very happy.
I'm fairly sure if you read those logs of the chats, you'll find more than you care to. Just a word of advice, don't ever think anyone's 'innocent' by any stretch of the imagination. This is online, remember, where anyone can be anything and safety's only a disconnect away.

2: there's no security on said machine. Time and time again, I've seen people who do crap like this just leave their machines wide open yet they're the first to say 'they know something about computers' and are surprised when shite like this happens. Get a firewall. 95% of them are 'dummy made' so you don't have to know anything to get it working fairly well. An afternoon of educating someone on common internet etiquette, dos and don'ts, etc etc, can save HOURS of recovery, embarassment, you name it...

www.tinysoftware.com (Tiny Firewall, 2.0 is free)
www.symantec.com (Norton's version)
www.mcafee.com (Mcafee's version)
www.sygate.com (Sygate)
www.zonelabs.com (Zone Alarm)

From the way it sounds, a direct connection was made so he had this girl's IP easily enough. That right there could open the door to unpatched windows exploits, some of which include the almighty ping-of-death, remote shutdown, you name it. Not to mention, BO or S7 could've been installed somehow by this person and he's just abusing the number of commands available to him. We don't know, because we don't know what this girl was doing/allowing/etc... At that point, you're better off trashing the system, building it from the ground up, installing the firewall, and assigning monitored time for the internet so that this wouldn't happen again. Check logs daily, check history for sites, check everything...

This reply could very well be taken wrong by a great number of people. Just understand that nothing is as it seems and that those 'most innocent' are sometimes way more corrupt than you could imagine and hence, they get themselves in a lot of shite...

[ubergeek]

I suggest you get a firewall, then if it alerts you that anything is happening log the IP address and give it to the authorities, They could then track him down based on that information, or at least track down his proxy server. If he's good enough to get around the firewall then just let the cops handle it.