I've heard that instant messages through AOL/Yahoo/MSN can be read by hackers that "sniff" the messages leaving my network. Is this true?


Yes.

It's actually true for all the data that comes and goes on your internet connection: web pages, emails, instant messaging conversations and more.

Most of the time it simply doesn't matter. Honest.
On the other hand, there are definitely times and situations when you really do need to be careful.
Data traveling on a network such as the internet can be seen by many other machines. Local machines connected via a hub, for example, all see the data being sent to and from all the other machines connected to the same hub. As the data travels across the internet, it actually travels across many devices each of which can "see" the data.

Sounds scary.
The good news is that's actually pretty hard to find data transmitted to and from a specific machine unless you're on the same network segment. For example, if you're connected to the internet via DSL, other machines sharing that DSL connection might watch your traffic, but random machines out on the internet would have an extremely difficult time tracking it down.
It's not something I worry about much at home.

However, there are scenarios that you should be very aware of. So don't completely let your guard down just because it may be hard for some hackers to spy on you, or maybe you might feel your not important enough... NOT TRUE!

Getting past our 2 firewalls, and our anti-virus software was just the tip of the ice burg for this Back-Door Trojan - Keystroke Virus that sat in all of our networked computers at work and stoled credit card numbers, passwords, social security card numbers, mothers maiden names,bank account numbers and worse.... for how long you ask? We actually have no idea, until we started getting charges to credit cards, paypal and more.

So, after five and a half weeks of changing passwords, canceling credit cards, bank account and .... well, you get the picture we dug ourselves out of the hole we were in. We did find our security hole 6 months later, as an employee was terminated for viewing porn on a work computer.

Our lesson, never use a computer with valuable or sensitive information on it and communicate with the outside "World - Wide - Web"!

So be safe out there!

If you are not Leo then you should credit the author.

http://ask-leo.com/can_hackers_see_d..._computer.html

Good morning Blue.
We deal with hackers all the time. It's definitely a very real problem. I'm still amazed how many companies are running unprotected wireless networks.

Ok, Credit to Leo as this is an excerpt to our event.

Absolutely. The information posted makes perfect sense.
I'm more amazed actually at how many sensitive networks are not kept in house and protected.

Cyber terrorism is going to be the next wave and it will be because the electrical grids and pentagon etc. are broadcasting over the internet for all intents and purposes.

I don't understand why they don't keep these types of networks internal.
I do understand that information needs to be shared but they are going to have to come up with a far more secure method.

Yeah, this is a daily problem. I don't think consumers quite realize how much this goes on.

I'm shocked also about how many unprotected networks are available.

Just an interesting tidbit, my county government building has an open, unprotected, wifi network.

I heard that with firefox addon(don't remember name) people could steal social network data through free wireless networks