I was Hacked! Maybe....

[Broken]

My ISP contacted me with a "Notice of Unsolicited Bulk E-mail". They informed me that they believe that my system has been infected with a "spammer virus", and they recommend that I reformat immediately.

I asked them by phone how they came to this conclusion and they where completely incompetent. They where obviously reading from cue cards and could not provide me with any further details on the matter.

I asked them to forward any available information to me so that I could properly fix the problem and they send me this

You may not be aware that your modem has been transferring data at a very high rate for an extended period, causing degradation of service to others. Now that you know, we request your cooperation.
Unsolicited Bulk E-mail places a burden on the network and is in violation of the Insightbb.com Acceptable Use Policy (see sections x and xi.) which explains that you may not:.... blah... blah... blah... nothing useful.

I think they are full of it. I uninstalled and reinstalled my anti-virus program, Mcafee. And still I am finding nothing. Nor have I ever detected a virus on my system. I did a remote scan viva Norton, and it found nothing.

For the sake of security I removed the basic Mcafee firewall and installed BlackIce.
I am really considering just brushing the whole incident off. Any thoughts from anyone out here?

[peat moss]

Tell them to pound sand and prove it . You and I probably have more computer knowledge than most of their IT staff .

Don't know why this stuff pisses me off but most of their customers can't spell Format let alone carry out the procedure. If you don't have anything to hide ( seed box ) invite the plicks over to see if the problem is on your end .

[limpdickkid]

maybe they're just talking about Torrent Seeding:

your modem has been transferring data at a very high rate for an extended period

[peat moss]

maybe they're just talking about Torrent Seeding:

your modem has been transferring data at a very high rate for an extended period

My first thought too but they want him to reformat ?

[limpdickkid]

I'm thinking its just speculation that you sent mass spam emails. Or just a nice way of saying stop uploading like a maniac. lol

[Broken]

The strange thing is that I upload nothing, and haven't for well over a year.
I am completely leeching from newsgroups, and this has been a slow month on the downloading.

[Hairbautt]

maybe they're just talking about Torrent Seeding:

your modem has been transferring data at a very high rate for an extended period

They are.

RR does the same thing "...Due to the nature of the activity, it appears that your computer has either been infected with a virus or has been compromised by a malicious mass emailing program. Some users have unknowingly installed these programs through file sharing networks (i.e. Kazaa, Limewire, etc.), viruses or by visiting a compromised website. Since the majority of these programs appear as legitimate programs, anti-virus programs may not protect you."

They should give you a date (or a range) in which they logged as high activity. It was probably ages ago 'cause they're always late on these things.

[TimDimman]

Hi Broken,

I'm not much of a network guy, but (assuming your a Windows kind of guy), running a "netstat -a" from the command prompt should give you an indication of activity...

I can't imagine that if you have something foreign on your machine that it would be constantly active, probably bursts at specified intervals. You may want to run netstat several times throughout the day to capture information?

Is this their diplomatic way of telling folks that bandwidth is being hogged, UL and DL? Or do you believe its specific to UL?