[MomtoPuppies]

:confused: I have been getting emails and now mail at my house from someone that claims to be my friend. I don't know who this person is, but I do have my suspicions. The thing is how did this person get my name, home address, email address and phone number. I have an AOL email address and AOL claims they do not give out any personal information about their users. And I know that a reverse search doesn't work on AOL oe AIM email addresses. So how is it possible that this person got all my information. I do not know anyone that this person knows and I never knew this person prior to this incident. How did they get my information? I would like to make sure it is whom I think it might be. I've tried reverse search but they use an AIM email and they have an AOL screen name so Reverse Search doesn't work. What do I do now? I am not a hacker and have no idea how to do such things. Does anyone know what I should do or how I can do this? Help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks to anyone in advance for any information and help they can give me in this matter. :D

[ScottGem]

There are a number of possibilities. Since you don't know who this is from, it could be someone you do know in real life. You may have also revealed info in correspodning with them, that allowed them to find out more about you. It is unlikely but not impossible that they got into AOL's customer info database.

So there is really no way to tell for sure how they found you.

[Lord_Darkclaw]

It''s possible that someone hacked your computer (there are lots of viruses and spyware, but it's a different thing when someone specifically targets your PC) and got hold of your address from one of your website accounts, but it's more likely to be someone who already knew where you lived.

You could try an IP Tracer (you can get a Tracer program for free) but I doubt you'll get any useful info. Best thing you can do is to to inform the post office that you are receiving nuisance/malicious mail and see if they can block it (they may even be able to trace it back to source), and change your email addresses - which may be a slight annoyance but it will solve that problem.

What Firewall program are you using? If you have Windows XP, don't rely on the firewall program that is built into it - it only stops incoming attacks; it will not stop a "trojan" from connecting OUT once it has got into your PC. Use Zone Alarm as your minimum defence - it's free and it's more powerful than Windows Defender.

If you've got Windows Vista, then that's another matter - I don't know much about Vista but I'm sure it has a fairly strong firewall.

Use an AntiSpyware program to search for any nasties - use Spybot Search&Destroy or AdAware SE (both are free).