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- The trick is knowing how to do a safe hack. As such:

1) You'll notice that Internic is the only site that never raises an alarm when you hack it. Get its admin password, then go to the directory and add a ton of public servers.

2) Set up a relay starting at Internic as your first hop, bouncing around all the rest of the Public servers. Save this route - you'll load it back up a lot, and can just add on whichever server you're using as a target at the end.

3) This will give you an obscene delay before the trace gets to you. But you still have to protect yourself from further investigations. After you're done with your hack, log into Internic and go into the admin logs.

4) You'll see some lines:

[time] Connection from (your IP) established
[time] Connection from (your IP) logged off
[time] Connection from (your IP) established (the connection you're on right now)
[time] (your IP) gained admin priviledges

Only delete the lines in bold. You want to remove any indication that you pathed through Internic, and you want to remove the fact that you logged into the admin account - but if you remove the line that isn't bolded, the logs will end up with a logoff line that isn't matched up to a logon line, and the powers that be will know you tampered with the logs.

(A note on this, you can choose to delete either of the 2 connection established logs, it doesn't matter which, so don't stress out. Just make sure that InterNIC displays the same number of connected and disconnected lines. )

5) Get logdeleter to its max level as soon as possible and you'll be basically untouchable.

- Another good way to get more time before a trace hits you is to bounce through servers you have access to. The easiest way to do it is to open an account in each game bank (search "bank" in Internic).

My usual starting gambit is to open accounts in all banks, get loans, get password craker max version (skip the dictionary ones AND TraceTracker), get log deleter max version and complete some easy jobs. If you don't have enough cash for log deleter do a few easy jobs anyway, because if your bounce is long enough the traces will take at least a couple real time hours, enough for you to complete a lot of jobs and still delete your traces on Internic.

- If you want to play on the stock market, buy stock for the companies that you take jobs from. After doing the job, wait until it hits the news and your stock will be worth much more.

- Divert CPU power to the program you are using RIGHT NOW with the arrows at each side of the programs. That will speed up cracking stuff.

- Don't make a long bounce chain in missions where you have to frame someone. You'll fail the mission because the trace is too long and the game can't trace it back to your scapegoat.

- Don't do incremental upgrades, at least at the start. Either buy the best version of a program or don't buy it at all.

- Also you can gain a ridiculous amount of money if you got the speed and the guts to do it. Sometimes you'll get a mission where they want you to hack someone's bank account to find the balance and it'll be a ridiculous amount, over $200M. What you'll need is set up an account in the bank you are going to hack, hack the bank with all the cipher crackers, transfer the money to your account in that same bank. Wipe the records of the transaction on both accounts and then do what Stelas outlined. Basically there are two types of traces: Passive and Active. Active is the countdown that you get when you are hacking. Passive doesn't give any indication that its undergoing. Even if you clear the logs and disconnect before the active trace hits you, IT personnel will follow the switch and router logs and find you. Usually within 24 hours. The bank hack I mentioned before gets a REALLY fast passive trace...measured in seconds. You get about 20 seconds to transfer the money, delete the transaction records and wipe the records at interNIC. Once you do this, you don't need to take a job again, you can dedicate yourself to the plot.