Facebook stalker

BungalowPrincess

Hello,

I'd be really greatful if anyone could help on the 25 May I received a friend request from a man called Lionel Joel a person I have never met before; his profile picture was a copy of my college bus pass from eight years ago something I do not have.

I found it strange but ignored him then on June 21st he changed his profile picture again to one of me at my sisters wedding six years ago. I reported it to facebook and sent requests for the pictures to be removed but still did not get in touch or answer his friend request.

He has now sent me a message on facebook which includes a picture of me as a baby and one of me and my sister on holiday together he says he has albums of pictures of me and after this I believe him. In his message he says he is from Cameroon so I can not understand how he has access to so many pictures of me.

Does anyone have any suggestions about what I should do? I do not have the pictures he is sending me but know my Mum has them stored on her computer so he must have got them from there. I do not know what to do and am finding it a little bit scary that someone I never met seems to have so much information about me.

Hope someone can help
Sarah

imho

Just block him.

neilwoods

inform your mum that her pc may have been hacked would be start. Like imho says block him.

googler

If he/she has already hacked into your Mum's PC and saved pics, then even shutting down your Mum's PC altogether and/or virus checking it won't prevent him/her using the pictures.

You could stop using Facebook. The stalker will likely lose interest then.

You could shut down your Facebook account and return with a different identity that you only make known to trusted friends

You could contact the cybercrime unit, if your local police force has one, but it's likely to get low priority next to large-scale money laundering and other more tangible crimes.......

timberflake

1) Block him.
2) Disconnect your mum's PC from the internet.
3) Back-up all documents, photo's etc on your mums PC.
4) Format your mums PC.
5) Install a good virus suite and anti-malware program.

23n1th

Tell the police???

phatbear

23n1th wrote: »

Tell the police???

if this chap is in Cameroon then no offence has occured in the soverign territory of the UK and therefore they would'nt be able to do a thing about it.

One thought has anyone who would have access to these pics recently got rid of an old computer alas quite often old pcs are harvested from dumps/tips and then sold on, in mass, to some slightly dodgy countries, where scammers etc make their living out of gathering the info on these hard drives and trying to hack accounts etc

phatbear

how odd someone asked for proof that this occurs then deleted their message, oddly he was typing with a slight cameroonian accent, anyway for anyone whos interested:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4790293.stm


http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/gadgets/5725801/Dumped-computers-exploited-by-crims

DCFC79

Defintely get your mum to disconnect the pc and back up the photos plus other files and reinstall XP or whichever OS she has.

Dave_C_2

I deleted my original reply asking for a source of discarded PCs being used for stealing data. I wanted to add the screed below. You were to quick for me! Apologies if you took this the wrong way.

For a pc from the dump stealing data is very difficult and time consuming and you have to be "techie" to do it:

• If it's not a working PC then the hard disk must be extracted and put in a working PC
• Remember that it was dumped - maybe a hard disk failure.
• The hard disc must be working or it's no use. Yes it's possible to extract data from a broken HD - if you are a dedicated data recovery team and you know that there is valuable data to recover. Very time consuming.
• Then you have to get the hard disk to boot. If there was a BIOS password set then you are screwed
• Then you have to get past any the password the original user used.
• Then you can start trawling the hard disc, but there is still no guarantee that there is valuable info on there.
• On my PCs all they will find is valuable (to me) photos of my Holidays in Ibiza and my latest Bruce Springsteen CD. I always type my password for anything to do with money.
• So the potential scammer has just spent the better part of a day for no return

Thanks for your replies about sources. The stealing data from recycled PCs is much more believable as the PCs have already been de-passworded.



Will a geordie accent do?



Dave

lovinituk

Dave_C wrote: »

For a pc from the dump stealing data is very difficult and time consuming and you have to be "techie" to do it: I expect most teenagers are techie enough these days!!

• If it's not a working PC then the hard disk must be extracted and put in a working PC Very simple to do
• Remember that it was dumped - maybe a hard disk failure. Plenty of people just dump old working components
• The hard disc must be working or it's no use. Yes it's possible to extract data from a broken HD - if you are a dedicated data recovery team and you know that there is valuable data to recover. Very time consuming. I'm sure there are plenty of dodgy people who have the equipment. Also as above, plenty of fully working components are dumped
• Then you have to get the hard disk to boot. If there was a BIOS password set then you are screwed
• Then you have to get past any the password the original user used. Its surprisingly easy to overcome some passwords
• Then you can start trawling the hard disc, but there is still no guarantee that there is valuable info on there. I'm sure some dodgy characters work on numbers - crack enough and you'll find something valuable
• On my PCs all they will find is valuable (to me) photos of my Holidays in Ibiza and my latest Bruce Springsteen CD. I always type my password for anything to do with money. Not everyone is as sensible!
• So the potential scammer has just spent the better part of a day for no return As above - its a numbers game

Here's a few more...

http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2012-06-01/patient-files-sold-on-ebay/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/06/nhs_trust_disputes_ico_fine/print.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1178239/Computer-hard-drive-sold-eBay-details-secret-U-S-missile-defence-system.html

http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Residual_Data_on_Used_Equipment

http://www.securitymanagement.com/article/data-remains-discarded-drives-006079

etc, etc

The last one states...

"Researchers from BT’s Security Research Centre, Edith Cowan University in Western Australia, Longwood University in Virginia, and the University of Glamorgan in the United Kingdom found data from individuals on 37 percent of the disks and commercial data on 46 percent of them."