mahistuffs
Disciple
Yesterday began as a great day..I was looking forward to complete the last minute arrangements for a House warming ceremony to be held on Wednesday and the fine day took a sudden head-on turn.
I have 2 gmail accounts one I use for regular communication and one the 2nd for *ahem* other stuffs like torrents etc to my surprise the 2nd account was not logging in…I use firefox for primary browsing…and have the 2nd account in IE 8.0 as homepage with password saved..Btw my OS is Windows XP..and use Nod32 Smart security.
I tried with the usual password which is 8 digit length with upper & lower case , includes number and a special character. I tried the last few passwords I remembered as I had saved the password I though may be I have forgotten it…I have read few weeks ago a Google server was down and users were unable to access it…so goggled it and found it had returned an error to the user….and I was getting username /password incorrect….tried the recover password option…and since I had not set a secondary email id I had to wait till 24hours before the security question was shown to recover the account….I did not suspect anything even at this moment…..I tried to send a mail to my 2nd account to check if something is wrong with server and to find if the mail bounces back….to my horror I got a mail back asking what I want from my 2nd account…when I emailed back WTF who are you. …I got a reply that he is doing for money and I need to pay to get back my account.
I use few hd torrents sites regularly and have saved passwords for them in firefox….to add on to my misery one of the sites did not login and tried the password which I use and found it to be incorrect…. …and few other torrents sites were also not logging in (My first mistake: I used same password for all my torrent accounts)….went to gmail account and tried to recover the 2nd account using account compromised option….I had to answer many questions and give a secondary email account ….Thankfully after 30 to 40 mins I got an email with a link and procedure to login to the 2nd email account…..
I unlocked my 2nd account and found that the first thing the hacker has done was to use the forgot password option on paypal…which I have not been using for ages and the balance is $1.95 and has no credit card linked….and after that he has gone to almost all the torrent sites I am a member and has used the recover password option to get new passwords for the account…he had taken over my seed box with a call log for a fresh ip/password…
I was tensed very much as in most of my HD torrent accounts I had a very high ratio with uploads over 1.5TB….and was frantically visiting every site to recover the account again…I was able to restore most of the accounts…however in HD torrent site the hacker has changed the email id registered….I was not sure how to contact admin of the site…so posted a thread for help …with the help of few in this forum and from a few friends was able to get in touch with a mod to recover my account today morning…
The hacker has used mine to invite another guy…he had changed the profile country / time zone…and yes all problem to India come from only one country mainly…he was from that country and had changed the time zone to GMT + 5:00 hrs and also invite another f***** from his country …have reported to the mods about it…..another shock was waiting for me here…I thought my account was hacked on Saturday but the user registered from my invite was registered on 27th of May.
:huh: I don’t have the faintest idea on how this would have happened. Few mistakes I have commited..I believe are
* Using same password for all my torrent accounts and
* is saving password on firefox a problem? I did not have a master password set
* I use Nod 32 smart security and don’t have any other spy ware or other related apps.
* I allowed one of my distant cousin to use the system on Saturday and he had used it to download few torrents from public tracker…I initially thought one of the crac**cks he has downloaded would have had a virus or Trojan …but the invite from my torrent account sent on 27th makes me think otherwise…
I use the PC for downloads and don’t install any apps with cra**cks as this is an intel atom based system ….and I don’t want to slow it down…apart from downloading..i use it for movies and don’t play any games…so I have ….imageburn, KM player, VLC and few other essentials like winrar etc..apart from this the pc has no new softwares…
Oh btw the hacker has used the seedbox to seed a few of his torrents from ip torrents…I am not a member of that site…but mailed the admins with the links of the torrents he was downloading in my seedbox…with the help of the info in the url the mods have acted against him… :clap:
From them on I have changed each of my account passwords to a complex 10 digit one …and each account with a different one..
I have a wireless router and have changed its password and modem’s password to a complex one.
Guys,
Can you please suggest me what I should do to safeguard myself.
Should I format my pc and install all software freshly…( I scanned my entire system using Nod and then using webroot spysweep trial…which identified many cookies only and did not clean any as it’s a trial).
What other antispyware / other security software should I use?
I have 2 gmail accounts one I use for regular communication and one the 2nd for *ahem* other stuffs like torrents etc to my surprise the 2nd account was not logging in…I use firefox for primary browsing…and have the 2nd account in IE 8.0 as homepage with password saved..Btw my OS is Windows XP..and use Nod32 Smart security.
I tried with the usual password which is 8 digit length with upper & lower case , includes number and a special character. I tried the last few passwords I remembered as I had saved the password I though may be I have forgotten it…I have read few weeks ago a Google server was down and users were unable to access it…so goggled it and found it had returned an error to the user….and I was getting username /password incorrect….tried the recover password option…and since I had not set a secondary email id I had to wait till 24hours before the security question was shown to recover the account….I did not suspect anything even at this moment…..I tried to send a mail to my 2nd account to check if something is wrong with server and to find if the mail bounces back….to my horror I got a mail back asking what I want from my 2nd account…when I emailed back WTF who are you. …I got a reply that he is doing for money and I need to pay to get back my account.
I use few hd torrents sites regularly and have saved passwords for them in firefox….to add on to my misery one of the sites did not login and tried the password which I use and found it to be incorrect…. …and few other torrents sites were also not logging in (My first mistake: I used same password for all my torrent accounts)….went to gmail account and tried to recover the 2nd account using account compromised option….I had to answer many questions and give a secondary email account ….Thankfully after 30 to 40 mins I got an email with a link and procedure to login to the 2nd email account…..
I unlocked my 2nd account and found that the first thing the hacker has done was to use the forgot password option on paypal…which I have not been using for ages and the balance is $1.95 and has no credit card linked….and after that he has gone to almost all the torrent sites I am a member and has used the recover password option to get new passwords for the account…he had taken over my seed box with a call log for a fresh ip/password…
I was tensed very much as in most of my HD torrent accounts I had a very high ratio with uploads over 1.5TB….and was frantically visiting every site to recover the account again…I was able to restore most of the accounts…however in HD torrent site the hacker has changed the email id registered….I was not sure how to contact admin of the site…so posted a thread for help …with the help of few in this forum and from a few friends was able to get in touch with a mod to recover my account today morning…
The hacker has used mine to invite another guy…he had changed the profile country / time zone…and yes all problem to India come from only one country mainly…he was from that country and had changed the time zone to GMT + 5:00 hrs and also invite another f***** from his country …have reported to the mods about it…..another shock was waiting for me here…I thought my account was hacked on Saturday but the user registered from my invite was registered on 27th of May.
:huh: I don’t have the faintest idea on how this would have happened. Few mistakes I have commited..I believe are
* Using same password for all my torrent accounts and
* is saving password on firefox a problem? I did not have a master password set
* I use Nod 32 smart security and don’t have any other spy ware or other related apps.
* I allowed one of my distant cousin to use the system on Saturday and he had used it to download few torrents from public tracker…I initially thought one of the crac**cks he has downloaded would have had a virus or Trojan …but the invite from my torrent account sent on 27th makes me think otherwise…
I use the PC for downloads and don’t install any apps with cra**cks as this is an intel atom based system ….and I don’t want to slow it down…apart from downloading..i use it for movies and don’t play any games…so I have ….imageburn, KM player, VLC and few other essentials like winrar etc..apart from this the pc has no new softwares…
Oh btw the hacker has used the seedbox to seed a few of his torrents from ip torrents…I am not a member of that site…but mailed the admins with the links of the torrents he was downloading in my seedbox…with the help of the info in the url the mods have acted against him… :clap:
From them on I have changed each of my account passwords to a complex 10 digit one …and each account with a different one..
I have a wireless router and have changed its password and modem’s password to a complex one.
Guys,
Can you please suggest me what I should do to safeguard myself.
Should I format my pc and install all software freshly…( I scanned my entire system using Nod and then using webroot spysweep trial…which identified many cookies only and did not clean any as it’s a trial).
What other antispyware / other security software should I use?
