Halp... sniffers via e-mail?

[redqueen]

I searched and there are dozens of links about sniffers... but it seems like most of the stuff I'm finding is intended to help people create these programs... not tell people how to find them / get rid of them.

I think I may have received a file like this... any advice would be sincerely appreciated.

[RoyGBiv]

1. What is your concern?

Where did you run across this term and what concerns you about it?

The term "e-mail sniffer" has several meanings, some of which mean nothing. The only practical application of a genuine "sniffer" is a bot that harvests e-mail addresses from ... well, anywhere an e-mail address may appear. They're little programs that "crawl" the Internet looking for e-mail addresses that are then loaded into a database and used as delivery lists for SPAM or other, similarly annoying purposes.

There is another form of "sniffer" that is bogus. This form of a sniffer supposedly can detect your e-mail settings and deliver content to you based on those settings. It doesn't exist. It can't.

So, there's nothing you need do to "detect" a sniffer.

If you got an e-mail, your e-mail address was already "sniffed" out there in the wide world of the Internet somewhere. The only defense against that is a quality SPAM blocker.

What did you receive, and why do you think it is a "sniffer"?

[redqueen]

2. An e-mail with a picture in it...

and I suspect it might have been a "sniffer" because it was from my ex, and he kept asking if I'd opened the e-mails he sent a week or so ago. Last night he asked again, and I finally went ahead and opened it.

It wasn't until after I did, and saw that it was really nothing impressive... that I remembered him talking in the past about installing "sniffer" programs to record keystrokes so that you could spy on people, and the fact that they could be embedded in jpg files.

[trotsky]

3. "Keylogger" is the more common term for that.

If you are current with your anti-virus and Windows Updates, you shouldn't have anything to worry about. The exploit in image files was patched quite a while ago so unless your ex is a brilliant computer hacker, you're safe.

[redqueen]

4. Thank you!

Not a brilliant hacker, but a brilliant manipulator to be sure.