>Let's see, for the last couple of days Safari and Text edit just >freeze up for no apparent reason while I'm on the net. Never ever had >that issue before. Force quit.
Not overly unusual, but happening less and less as OS X matures. First thing I'd do is run Disk Utility and have it repair permissions and do a disk check to be sure the disk is ok. Once both of those are complete (and report that all is ok), I'd get the OS up to date. 10.4 is up to 10.4.7, so run Software Update and get the latest updates. >This morning when I could not access the internet nor could I >retrieve or send mail, that's what precipitated my call to the ISP. What was happening? Alas, you are on cable service, which means you should expect problems from time to time and that you need to reboot your cable modem from time to time. >He had me shut off my computer and power down the cable modem. Turn >computer/modem back on and he then did a ping test(whatever that is) >and then based on the results proclaimed I had some kind of spyware >on my computer which he acknowledged was unusual for a Mac. It is 100% impossible to know if ANY computer has spyware based on a ping test. If he did a port scan, maybe he could infer spyware based on some open ports... but then, you ARE running behind a firewall or NAT router correct? (there should be some kind of router device between you and your cable modem that is giving you a non live IP address, ie: an address likely in the 192.168.x.x range) >Recently I received several unusual >emails from a party I've never heard of. I never get spam until now. >I suspect that's where this problem came from. Currently there is no known email exploits on the Mac. Were you sent strange Mac compatible attachments that you promptly ran? Unless you did that, then your problems are almost certainly not from email you received. Of course, just because you've never had spam in the past, doesn't mean you didn't get it now. If you haven't had it before, it is just a matter of time before you do get it. Spam is just something that everyone has to accept is a part of using email. >That said I do want to ascertain whether or not I have something on >my computer that is not in my interest. if you REALLY want to be sure nothing unusual is running on your Mac, open a terminal window, and type the following: ps -A >running be sure to make that a capital A. After you do that, if you check your user home folder (the same folder that contains things like your Documents folder, Movies folder, Music, Sites... all those), you should now have a file called "running" in there. Email me that file. That file will contain a list of all processes running on the Mac. If you email me that list, I can look it over and tell you if anything is running that shouldn't be. But I'm pretty confident as is, that your issues are not spyware or any other kind of malware related. I suspect you have nothing more than some permissions errors, possibly minor disk corruption, and are out of date on bug fixes. I just think it is a coincidence of timing that you got spam and your cable modem crapped out and needed to be rebooted. > >That said I do want to ascertain whether or not I have something on >my computer that is not in my interest. -chris <http://www.mythtech.net> ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
