I am a member of several forums on the web and pretty much always use the same login name:  Allochthonous.

About a month ago, I joined the iPod Hacks forum and asked some questions.  A couple of weeks later, I received the following e-mail in my Hotmail, which is the account I use to register for forums, etc.

Dear Allochthonous,
Your account on iPod Hacks Forums has been locked because SOMEONE has tried to log into the account with the wrong password more than 5 times. You will be able to attempt to log in again in another 15 minutes.

The PERSON trying to log into your account had the following IP address:
70.86.138.114

Don't forget that the password is case sensitive. Forgotten your password? Use
the link below:
http://forums.ipodhacks.com/login.php?do=lostpw

All the best,
iPod Hacks Forums

I shrugged this off as odd, but did not really worry. I just figured that some visitor of the site was messing around or had a login that was similar (or wanted that one).

Well, this morning I received this email in my Hotmail:

Dear allochthonous,
Your account on Digital Camera Resource Page - Forums has been locked because someone has tried to log into the account with the wrong password more than 5 times. You will be able to attempt to log in again in another 15 minutes.

The person trying to log into your account had the following IP address:
72.233.34.186

Don't forget that the password is case sensitive. Forgotten your password? Use
the link below:
http://www.dcresource.com/forums/login.php?do=lostpw

All the best,
Digital Camera Resource Page - Forums
I joined this forum about a year ago and have not been there in several months.
Both of them are in my Favorites.  A little freaked, I traced the IP using http://www.arin.net/whois/ to the DALLAS, TX metro. They appear to be different providers, one in Dallas, one in Frisco.

I really do not think my system has been jeopardized, as I use real time antivirus, have Windows firewall turned on, am behind a router, and am a relatively SAFE internet user.  I check my security at Shield's Up about once a month, just to be safe.  I am invisible, according to it.  Besides, why in the world would anyone who has hacked into my system give a crap about FORUMS??

My only other lead is that I have a friend who lives north of Dallas. He has a 12 year old son who messes with computers quite a bit. I have found that you can Google "allochthonous forums" and it will pull up quite a few of my posts on various sites.  He does know that I use this as a login name, but I don't know that he would know how to spell it.  HOWEVER, when i lookup his IP, it shows up as CableOne.

I am willing to accept the identical verbiage in the letters, as they are both vBulletin forums and probably use a standard letter for this warning.

Could it be a bot?

What the heck?

PKAllochthonous .......  Well the first thing I would do would be to log into both of your accounts and change the password.

Record the 2 ip addresses just in case they are required in the future.

Let us know if you have any issues when changing your passwords.


dl65  Found this:

http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32112

Seems I am not alone on the DCRP forum.

PKmaybe a bot try to crack your info? got your name off the sites or just someone This is certainly an odd issue.  It might be a bot like warrior suggests.  At this point, I don't think there's a whole lot you can do it about.  Just keep a close watch on that thread and report any other e-mails you may receive.