Excessive bytes sent implies hacker ??

Question

While on the internet I seem to be sending an excessive number of bytes in relation to the number I receive (as reported by clicking on the winking internet status icon with the 2 little monitors sited in the System Tray.)  Very seldom do I upload any files. Why, then, do I often see a ratio of 3 to 1 between  (bytes received)/(bytes sent) ?  Is this a symptom of hackers taking over my computer to send mass mailings or other garbage ?  I mean it seems ridiculous when 30 million bytes received and 10 million bytes sent, during a session. Or is it perfectly innocent and normal, simply my machine chatting away for incomprehensible reasons with the servers / nodes / whatever/  at my ISP ? Or is it something much more sinister....  some entity browsing through the files on my machine and extracting any that look at all interesting..... Or is it simply that the computers that send files to me need to check the correctness of transmmission by having my machine echo back to them certain checksums and other verifying information ? About the most striking ratio was 5MB received to 29MB sent.  I then *really* suspected hackers at work. What I would *really* like to see is a program that will dump every byte that my machine sends into a file that I can browse  afterwards and search for plain text...  just to reassure me that no one is stealing my magnum opus....  Well.... why the hey is my puter sending so many bytes ????

volcano11 · Answer

Are you running anitivirus software with up to date virus definitions? Such up to date software should detect any trojan activity. Are you running a firewall (other than the Windows XP built-in firewall)? Such software should detect unauthorized internet access and alert you. Have you checked your system for spyware and removed all of the spyware? See the message at the top of this forum for information on removing spyware.

Steve

Windows General

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