How do you trace an IP address?

[Ck]

Is this hacking in an attempt to gain access to on on-line account, like a forum Twinky?

If it is I think it's quite common. I don't know what people hope to gain from doing it though.

All I can advise is that you make sure your password is very safe and very very difficult to guess. Don't use passwords such as the name of your children or your pet and anything that you're likely to broadcast in public such as the name of your favourite film or band.

Personally I feel a safe password is one that doesn't make any sense to anybody, such as a few random words and even numbers. Something like 24banana56swim87yes would be quite safe.

[Earl]

Might be worth emailing BT as well because they will have records of who is using that connection at that time. From the link that Alpha gave: Please send abuse reports to abuse@btbroadband.com.

That's the usual course of action. Keep copies of any nasty e-mails and forward them to the police. They won't give a crap about people trying to hack your accounts, but sending shitty e-mails is usually taken more seriously.

The other thing is to report which accounts are being attacked to the sites they belong to. Their admin may be able to assist, and they can report the tossers to their ISPs too.

[Twinky]

Yes CK, you're right. But this appears to be a concerted attempt, possibly by more than one person (although I, personally, only have the details of the IP I posted, the police have indicated to me that the emails came from more than one IP address) and that's the reason I got the police involved. Normally I'd just ignore it but there are some things I won't ignore and involving my children is one of those things.

[Twinky]

That's the usual course of action. Keep copies of any nasty e-mails and forward them to the police. They won't give a crap about people trying to hack your accounts, but sending poopty e-mails is usually taken more seriously.

The other thing is to report which accounts are being attacked to the sites they belong to. Their admin may be able to assist, and they can report the ignoramuss to their ISPs too.

Yes, right again. It was the emails which prompted me to go to the police and, for anyone else who ever finds themselves in this position, the police are REALLY helpful. I thought they might just laugh at me but, far from it, they were very helpful and took it very seriously.

[Fenella]

Yes, right again. It was the emails which prompted me to go to the police and, for anyone else who ever finds themselves in this position, the police are REALLY helpful. I thought they might just laugh at me but, far from it, they were very helpful and took it very seriously.

That's really nice to know actually. I would have just expected the police to tell you to ignore it, so I'm glad they take it seriously.

[Twinky]

Yes, it's nice to know that they DO take it seriously and act upon it. They don't give you details of IP's etc., they just update you on how it's going. I had to sign a form to say I was willing to support a prosecution if they arrested anyone in connection with it. They said they deal with in a similar way to abusive phone calls, you also have to agree that you'll support a prosecution there too apparently. I assume they don't want to be doing work only to find out that you won't go to court at a later point.

[Ck]

They do take it seriously. Harrassment online is considered as serious as harrassment face to face on the street these days.

[t-v]

They do take it seriously. Harrassment online is considered as serious as harrassment face to face on the street these days.

So it should be, I could imagine it would actually be more intimidating to be harassed over the internet because you don't know who is sending the threatening messages or what they know about you.

[Earl]

They take it as seriously as crank calls. There's probably been a lot of cases of half-wits who think they can get away with it.

[SFB]

No, those sort of people are brainless dolts.

There's a lot of it about.