Does the government monitor ATS?

Just days after joining ATS my "c" drive crashed! This drive is a Maxtor 200 gig that is less than two months old.

I have always had good luck with these drives, so I was wondering, did I get to close to the truth here on ATS?

Was some of the threads or links I went to uncomfortable for the powers that be?

Was my (almost) brand new drive destroyed somehow through my DSL line because we are on a path to understanding?

Or, was it bad luck?

What do you think?

I don't know. But if your theories are correct, please point me to the thread you were reading just prior to the crash. Because I've been here a year and haven't been zapped yet, so obviously - I'm off in the tallgrass.

Let me know!

My advise: Get Zone Alarm to use as a firewall
Get AdAware to check for spyware and adware
Get SpyBot to check for that which AdAware misses.

From what I've been able to tell, a lot of spyware and adware are operating system specific, because they have to get through specific security holes. Sometimes, the wrong version gets on your computer, and can cause havoc.

As for believing the government attacked your PC, I think it was just bad luck. I've been here for a while, and haven't had problems like that.

I'm also in IT, and my company only gets Maxtor drives, best performance for the money, and really reliable. However, they do, sometimes, fail. If it's a manufacturing defect, it's going to happen soon. I had one where a month after we got it, the reader head tore into the actual Hard drive disk. THAT was a dead hd.

Well, considering that no one else here seems to have experienced such things I'd have to say I think it was a fluke.

Of course there's always an explanation for such things. My question for you is was it an actual hardware failure, or are you talking about a software crash?

Originally posted by Djarums
Well, considering that no one else here seems to have experienced such things I'd have to say I think it was a fluke.

Of course there's always an explanation for such things. My question for you is was it an actual hardware failure, or are you talking about a software crash?

It seems to be history. XP is trying to boot from the "e" drive, a twin to the dead one.

But, this does bring an interesting question.

Does the govermnent monitor sites such as this?

Maybe keep a list of it's members?

Or, do they use it to keep an eye on how people who think "out of the box" see current events?

My computer has crashed three times in the last month and I am seeing a lot more problems with my computer lately, you may have a point.

Originally posted by Lastday Prophet
My computer has crashed three times in the last month and I am seeing a lot more problems with my computer lately, you may have a point.

Check out those programs I talked about earlier in this thread. I'd been having nightmare problems with both of my home computers, and after I put all three of those on, the problems went away. When I first ran it, AdAware found 147 things on my computer, and then SpyBot found another 35. Don't remember the numbers on my XP box, but it was only connected to the net for about 5 days when I put those programs on it.

No idea about the computer issues you're having...but...do Govt Agencies monitor ATS?? Yes. Well...we know for a fact they visit here regularily. I was also put on to ATS, back in 2000, by a friend who works for the NZSIS...which is my country's equivalent of the the FBI/NSA I guess...he had visited ATS back in its fledgeling days and said he and his co-workers often surfed Conspiracy Sites to have a laugh, and to also check out what may or may not have leaked out anywhere.

ATS and places similar, when you think about it, would be the kinds of websites you'd WANT to be aware of if you were a Govt Intel/National Security Agency...for the very people who frequent these sites tend to be the ones who are more prone to becoming subversive towards the State/Govt...a bit like keeping an eye on possible breeding grounds for anything that may impact on National Security. Just makes sense.

Yeh...with regards to puters, # happens.

But I seriously doubt it's anything to do with the gov'ment.

As for them looking in. They might do, but I'm sure they also take a poke around the other gazillion political sites/groups/communities out there.

In other words, that's a whole hell of a lot to monitor.

And when you consider some of the stuff that's been found on the internet, I would hardly consider ATS any kind of threat.

I keep a few "honeypot" (tempting targets for malicious hackers) computers visible to the Internet along with my actual servers. On each honeypot I put deliberately suspicious of inflammatory items, such as every suspected Echelon key-word, and none of those has ever been damaged or cracked, to the best of my knowledge. Each is protected with multiple layers of safeguards, both hardware and software, and connections to them are extensively logged. I do get quite a few interesting attempts to break in, and they get "touched" by questionable sources. This type of activity has increased since I started posting on ATS, but no harm has come to them and the upsurge is probably due to the increased expose I have given to my website.

Now the thrice daily helicopter overflights of my house that started shortly after are more disturbing. ...and, no, I am not kidding. paranoid, yes. kidding? no.

[Edited on 29-4-2004 by Spectre]

It would be easy to think that I was being watched. My mouse cursor once moved across the screen by itself. Today my phone connection mysteriously beeped, went silent and then the person I was talking to just a few secs ago thanked me for calling back but I did not. I just didn't hang up the phone.

If you happen to surf upon a document or web site and there is small print at the bottom that says for government use only and your computer gets totally frozen, then you may get suspicious. I wonder if you could accidently find a sensitive document this way though.

My hard drive has also been on the verge of crashing for some time now. Maybe it got a reprieve for good behavior.

Actually, I have been fvked with ever since I have came to this site, but f'em . . . Am I worried? Mabey! But sill, f'em . . .

I've had 3 maxtor drives crash in the last 2 years. and one crashed 3 months after I got it. It was a 120 gig firewire external that I used as a file server storage so it was on and running 24/7. Be careful when buying hard drives, some of them have warranties some don't. Not like it's a big deal, hard drives are cheap these days.

Joined the site yesterday, April 29, 2004. Have since logged massive port sweeps. Am, in fact, at this moment engaged in a bazaar email exchange with my IP that's very out of the ordinary regarding the information they require to investigate port scans. No pro at this, but no novice and what I'm seeing is without question out of the norm. Is it against site protocol to list suspect ip's?

As JungleJake said, use Zone Alarm, I recently got a cable modem installed and am using Zone Alarm and I really like it.

It blocks incoming attempts to "get at" your PC, you choose what to let in and what not !

Of course governments monitor sites like these, but i doubt they will mess with your computer just for accessing this site. Also note that certain topics will be taken down if seen as highly sensetive

my phone at work beeps every time i pick it up and no one else in the whole office has that happen to there phone lines.......
go figure

This might help... Since February 1st, 2004... We've had 13,598 unique users from .mil domains. and... We've had 3,196 unique users from .gov domains. [Edited on 30-4-2004 by SkepticOverlord]

I have been coming to this website for 2 years, and I have experienced no problems. Although my router (I have a 24/7 DSL Internet connection throughout my LAN) emails me it logs every morning, and emails me instantly when it recieves a threat (such as a DoS attack). The router acts as my firewall, as you may of guessed.

And with that, I get about 200 emails a day from it (all DoS attacks). I think that is normal though, and nothing to do with ATS.

As for your hard drive crashing, just bad luck I guess. I try and use Western Digital hard drives for all the computers I build, but I have still had problems with them - but like somebody else said, their very cheap these days - as long as you keep backups of your important data, it's not much to worry about.

I don't know how the governments would attack you accross the Internet anyway, I mean - yes that could easily, but crash your hard drive? Unless they implant a boot sector virus on your hard drive - I don't think there are many other ways.

Try not to rely on software firewalls (such as Zone Alarm), nothing beats a proper hardware firewall/gateway. Well, I can think of one more way - lock your computer in a cupboard, with no floppy, cd-drive and no network connections - though that's just insane, lol.

I think the governments would watch over these sort of websites, even if it's just for a giggle - to see how way off we are.

I've just posted on BTS over the exact same topic, we're all paranoid this week
Yeah they do check ATS out, but I doubt they tap into your phonelines...
However the car outside my house with those dudes in black suits and sunglasses have been out there for like...a month now. (and I am joking. Spectre, that's just weird! More info on the helicopters! )