Help Regarding Msn

Money_Mad_3

Can anyone hacked into a computer through MSN. My daughter mistakenly added someone who she thought was her friend must have got MSN address wrong on a number of occasions and the person said that they had hacked into her computer and that they could see she had a folder of pictures and a music file and that she had web cam, and what her opening page was. Whoever it was/is didn't get everything right a number of things he/she got wrong. But she is worried now that whoever it is has hacked into her computer and that they can follow her when on MSN, and can control her computer.

Is this right? Can this happen. How can she be sure that whoever it is hasn't done this, and how can she check. Any help greatly appreciated.

Many Thanks

roadsidetree

Hi,

I am not a computer expert.

Having said that - provided you have a decent firewall, anti-virus and anti-spyware, I doubt anyone can access your computer without your knowledge.

I would check for the processes running in your computer. You can do this by -
* Press 'ctrl-shift-esc' character together for 'Windows task manager'.
* go to 'processes' tab

Here you can see all processes that are running. If you think of any suspicious process, google the name of process.

I hope this helps,

NBE

This is just someone pretending that they can do this. In order for someone to have control over her computer and remotely access the webcam your daughter would have had to install some form of spyware or malware that the person on the other end of the chat would have sent her in the original conversation. Even if some spyware had been installed it is virtually imposible to remotely control a computer (even just the webcam) without the users express permission everytime it occurred. Your computer should also be protected by a firewall, this will prevent any unauthorised accessing of the computer. Therefore there is nothing to worry about, in your post you state that they made several mistakes when attempting to guess what was on your daughters computer, this shows that it was a scare tactic rather than them "seeing" her documents etc. For peace of mind you can run a spyware and anti-virus scan on the computer and remove any threats which are located. These are very unlikely to have been caused by the MSN conversation and are likely just to be general things picked up whilst browsing the internet. I assume you have antivirus software and anti spyware software but if you do not then you can download free antivirus from http://free.avg.com/ and anti spyware from http://www.safer-networking.org/. Finally bear in mind the MSN is used by millions of people every day and is a safe network, if there was a way to hack into a computer through it, lots of people would do it and Microsoft would very quickly find a way to stop it, so you really have nothing to worry about.

Hope this helps a bit

ecgirl07

MSN has sharing folders so if she agreed to share a folder with the contact the contact would see the contents of her sharing folder. Check the "folder with two people" icon next to the email icon on the live messenger screen and that will show her sharing files.

aliEnRIK

MSN is FULL of nasties
As for one example an ACTUAL friend of mine sent me a link saying something like 'IS THIS YOU?' Now under normal circumstancies id have asked what it was but I was very tired and just clicked the link. Next thing I had a nasty virus on my computer (Which was particularly hard to get rid of). (As it stands she had the virus herself and never ACTUALLY sent it to me herself)
My point to all this is that if shes inadvertantly clicked some link then she could easily have (by accident) put something nasty on the computer!

Id suggest (If you havnt already) installing and running an anti virus.
Also ~
Spybot
Adaware
Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

If you need any help just ask

aliEnRIK

"Finally bear in mind the MSN is used by millions of people every day and is a safe network"

Im sorry but thats just not true ~ MSN is safe so long as you dont click on any links.....

tradetime

I always run MSN in a sandbox, can click all the links you want then, just don't recover them to your hard drive. But then I run most internet connections in a sandbox.

Money_Mad_3

Hi tradetime, can you explain what is a sandbox please

tradetime

Money_Mad wrote: »

Hi tradetime, can you explain what is a sandbox please

For want of a better explanation, (as I'm not hugely tech minded) it is like a quarantine area on your computer, into which an application, such as your browser can be loaded. The consequence of this is that anything you do with your browser is contained within that quarantine area. It's a bit like virtualisation for dummies. When you finish you simply empty the sandbox an everything has gone, nothing is allowed onto you hard disc proper unless you specifically allow it.
This link will explain better.
Sandboxie