How to stop someone from snooping around and getting your info through either finger or some sort of port scanning has been the bane of many administrator's existence. Currently, there are informal debates going on everyday in either think tanks and brainstorming meetings of the big software developpers to small groups of techies gathering at a starbucks to students at some college campus pondering what to do about it all. Some of the more popular solutions being pitched to and fro by either:

A Ghosting/Masking your IP address so your system is not find-able. You can either do this by buying some software from a retailer like Best Buy for example, but they're not 100% effective. Or you can direct your bandwidth/ traffick through a third party proxy-- You can get the privoxy filtering freeware for example from www.privoxy.com or http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...group_id=11118 I use it and it's really good. My port scanning attacks did not go away completely but they did reduce severely. The problem with being on a Lan like Roadrunner is that people may find it easier to hack you because you're all on the same network.

B Designing a software or firewall that hacks back the hacker breaking into your computer; but that's actually very illegal right now. There are actually freeware utilities out there that can actually take down the domain of the person hacking you; but remember, those are illegal and it'll get you in trouble with the FCC-- it's kind of like a felony. Some of these freeware utilities have malicious code that override the BIOS and do all manner of nasty things to the offending system, I even found one this one time that suppossedly was able to overclock the hacker computer so as to make the chip burn out. If you feel tempted to look for them you will probably find them but do not downloadthem and do not use them. You're only asking for trouble. Using them could cause unimaginable demage to all manner of networks and computers (like taking down a domain) and the FCC would definitely notice something like this. It's a felony of BIBLICAL proportions. You wanna stay away from those, resist the desire for retaliation. Why do you want to know who fingered you? What if you could trade off 'not knowing who did it' for being 'safe'? You can be safe in the internet and the answer is layering.

C Layering upon layering of security I think is the best wy to go. Not only would you have piece of mind that your system is well camouflaged, youll know that what you are doing is completely legal.
Cisco has some servers and routers that defend themselves from attacks,
and although not all of us can afford a cisco router, thgat would be the best way to go. What I do is I have 3 software firewalls running simultaneously (Sygate, Norton, and Black Ice), plus a small inexpensive router, and a hardware firewall, AND I use privoxy = )

Now, hardware firewalls and small routers can be expensive, but the one I use is pretty cheap. This is the one I have http://www.netgear.com/products/details/FR114P.php
and here's where you can get it http://netgear.pricegrabber.com/sear...artnum=FR114P/

And this one http://www.netgear.com/products/details/DG834G.php
And here's where to buy it http://netgear.pricegrabber.com/sear...partnum=DG834G

I hope this helps
Robert