Cult of the Dead Cow, who programmed it, create nasty intrusive hacking tools for getting into your hard drive completely unknown and are known to disguise their hacking as "legitimate software" for people who "need to control remote computers without anyone local knowing."

They perfected the 22 character file name placement so that it doesn't appear in Microsoft's Window Task manager because of too many characters, and can run invisibly even when you are LOOKING for something.

NOTHING is ever free - especially from these folks.

These folks can put an invisible keyboard stroke recorder on your computer and read your files, record your passwords & e-mails and when you log on, route all the data to a file on their server via one of several quiet ports without ever bringing it to your attention when you are at your computer.

They then take this information, make copies and sell the data on a first come, first served basis to bad guys and government agencies too.

I mentioned earlier AGNITUM OUTPOST. They offer software that locks down these ports and monitor ALL incoming and outgoing traffic, it's source and give you the option to block all, permit one time, or always allow various types of data traffic. A firewall that is totally proactive and on constant red alert.

Many firms and even Microsoft technicians use Agnitum to protect valuable data and keep hard drives safe.

Just my 10cents