So yesterday, with the intention of helping a stranger on the internet, I succesfully had a keylogger run on my laptop. The damage is collateral and, showing how serious was this 'hacking' attempt, the culprit changed my facebook profile picture and sent vulgar messages in Spanish to my friends.
Nothing of real value had been lost, I reinstalled Windows and changed all my passwords, hopefully not following the pattern that has been viewed.
The lesson is, your personal information online is vulnerable and while on this occasion I managed to avoid real harm, you never can be careful enough. The 'don't talk to strangers' rule applies in all conditions - it was my fault and nobody else's (except that 'hacker"s).
This does not affect anything about my google+ account or blogging as they keylogger needed information to be typed on the actual keyboard. However, if you notice something that slipped past my guard, please contact me immediately.
When this technology falls into the wrong hands... Some people must have sad and lonely lives if the best they can do with their time is this kind of cyber-vandalism. This isn't hacking - I know what hacking is and what hackers are, I used to be one myself. Properly speaking, it is a constructive and legitimate activity, and neither invasive nor destructive. Trust the News Media to hijack the language and give it a pejorative slant.
ReplyDeleteClods like your Spanish-speaking pal are the first to whinge, too, when they discover that 'what goes around, comes around.'
Very insightful - it is not by accident I used quotation marks on the word 'hacker'.
DeleteWell done for acting quickly and avoiding too much serious damage.
ReplyDeleteThanks, it's sort of a relief to know the crisis had been averted.
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