How easy/hard hard is it for someone to hack into a laptop on a public network? I'm running Win7 and my Windows Firewall is on but I'm not running Zone Alarm. I have all my public access points set as such. I'm also running MSE but don't know if that has intrusion detection.
Today I was sitting in my favorite Starbucks where I go to do work once or twice a week and brows the net when after a few minutes the bandwidth got real slow. Normally, I don't have any bandwidth issues at that Starbucks nor with the sites visited. There where also about the same amount of customers with laptops in the store as usual.
Sitting across from me and about 20 feet away where two "nerdy looking
" (for lack of a better term) teen boys. They where facing away from me but I could see most of their laptop screen. There where constantly looking over their shoulder like they where paranoid and up to no good. I could see them switching between a youtube screen, a windows explorer type screen and a simple black screen like a (command prompt screen) that just had lines of something written on them. I could see them occasionally typing on the black screen and into another small black window. It seemed like when they thought no one was watching they would stay on either the black screens or the explorer screen but as soon as someone approached them they would switch back to the youtube screen.
Am I being paranoid? If they did get into my system and where downloading something to slow down the bandwidth, what would they want from me? The games I have they probably already have anyway, music, movies? Seems to me there are easier ways to get those files.
Should I get Zone Alarm or similar. I found ZA to be more of a PIA years ago and stopped using it.
Today I was sitting in my favorite Starbucks where I go to do work once or twice a week and brows the net when after a few minutes the bandwidth got real slow. Normally, I don't have any bandwidth issues at that Starbucks nor with the sites visited. There where also about the same amount of customers with laptops in the store as usual.
Sitting across from me and about 20 feet away where two "nerdy looking
Am I being paranoid? If they did get into my system and where downloading something to slow down the bandwidth, what would they want from me? The games I have they probably already have anyway, music, movies? Seems to me there are easier ways to get those files.
Should I get Zone Alarm or similar. I found ZA to be more of a PIA years ago and stopped using it.