Email Hacking, How Do I Prevent It?

Conor_3

Red1708 wrote: »

How do you come up with the scenario that I let them in?

To reset a Hotmail password, they need to answer a question so if you've used "What's my birthday?" and have your date of birth on your facebook/bebo/friends reunited whatever site, it doesn't take a genius to work it out. If you're going to use personal information as a reset password security, change it. For example, use your birthday but change the year.

bookduck

chris667 wrote: »

...
On windows, click Start>Run>, type "cmd", then type "netstat -an" at the command prompt. This gives you a list of every network connection.

Personally I'd download Process Explorer, do the above steps, but type "netstat -ao"

This gives a similar output, but you get a PID - Process Identifier. Once you know the pid you can use Process Explorer to track the running item down and too find where that bit of s/w is located on your drive. If you are not sure of the 'process', then google it. A legitimate process may even be hijacked, so it looks valid ?

...A person I know hacked into my email account and reset my password...

- this does sound suspect, like something is missing? I Agree with chris667

The quick and sure fix (especially if you have limited IT knowledge - which I'm sure you don't )is to wipe your pc and start again, as it is the only way you can be 100% certain. Remember to back up your important files first.

Your email is another issue.

If you can go onto a wired network (rather than wireless router), you cold do worse than downloading the free and bootable Puppy linux cd. Surf/web email with that for the time being while you sort your windows box out - if you don't want to wipe the box.

Red1708

tom9980 wrote: »

Yes the question is how he guessed the new email address? only a few conclusions for this can be reached

• He has access to your PC physically. Not anymore but did have and this person also set up my router etc so knows all the passwords
• He has installed something to allow him to spy on you such as a trojan certain types are available in certain communities on the internet are not in virus databases so dont trust virus software in a case such as this because its not random. I have installed spybot and superantispyware neither have found anything.
  
• He has access or control of a friends email address or PC who you have since emailed on the new account. It has been claimed that somebody sent an anon email giving him the new address.
• He guessed because you used a screen name you already commonly used before he knows about.

Providing us with more information on this situation might help us figure it out but the Police should be involved and you should make sure you talk to an officer who is trained in this sort of crime. Depending on the severity of this i actually suggest you cancel any credit/debit cards associated with online shopping accounts to prevent him doing anything more serious.

Thanks for the reply thankfully I do not have any banking details linked to that account. I don't believe they got an anon email but I have been told that they were using a phoney facebook account and google cache to check out my profile on facebook and believe that is probably where they got the information from.

C_Ronaldo

Red have you removed any personal details from your facebook account, would doing a fresh install of windows help, id also change the router password etc to something only you know, makes it say 10 characters long and have a mixtur eof letters and numbers

fitshase

I would also possibly change your router if that person set it up for you. They may have some remote access set up on it.

Have you asked them why they are doing this?

C_Ronaldo

Changing the router is a possibility as well,

tom9980

A fair few routers have remote access ability Netgear DG834 for example so if you tell us your router make/model someone can check for you. Do you have the router login and password for the router? if not we can use the factory reset button on the router and you can set it up again yourself its not hard at all in most cases and we can provide you with a detailed guide in many cases.

Facebook is a big hole really you need to carefully look at the privacy options (top right as you login) then read all the options carefully i would limit all details to friends only and would set a limited profile for those people i do not trust on my friends list.

IRT1959

.... http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=681359

IRT1959

Red1708 wrote: »

How do you come up with the scenario that I let them in? They bypassed or guessed my password to the first email account! Then found out my new email address and is trying the same. I didn't give them permission to gain access to that account. I never hit links in emails (had my ebay account hacked that way so learnt my lesson well). I have antivirus, anti spyware and a firewall

..........

http://www.itpro.co.uk/603852/new-trojan-threat-able-to-control-network-routers

http://cyberinsecure.com/new-zlob-trojan-version-alters-wireless-router-settings-and-hijacks-dns/

http://news.google.co.uk/news?num=100&hl=en&um=1&tab=wn&q=zlob&ie=UTF-8&scoring=n

emails at TD

Belnahua

tom9980 wrote: »

A fair few routers have remote access ability Netgear DG834 for example so if you tell us your router make/model someone can check for you. Do you have the router login and password for the router? if not we can use the factory reset button on the router and you can set it up again yourself its not hard at all in most cases and we can provide you with a detailed guide in many cases.

Also, you can set the router so it can only be administered by computers directly connected to it, and not by wireless. So any wireless computers can not change any router settings!