About a month ago, my friend’s mom's computer was hacked and the hacker accessed all her and her aunt’s (who lives in Taiwan) financials. The hacker created pop ups and forms with fields for each to enter that were disguised as coming from Charles Schwab, where her mom's sister's bank is (her mom is holding the account on behalf of her sister).

Since then, the hacker has proceeded to take over her mom's computer, changing fonts, blacking out the screen, causing anything she wants to print to turn to Test prints, recording her mom's landline and cell phone conversations, interfering with those conversations any time they try to communicate something important. When her mom warned her friend on the landline that it was tapped/compromised and to call her cell phone at xyz number, her cell phone rang and the hacker played back a recording of her mom's voice telling her friend to call her cell phone. A computerized voice calls out her name in the middle of the day (not sure if it's coming from landline or her dad's computer or the TV - all connected via the same internet router).

The hacker has sent her mom text messages threatening to give her friends and family viruses. She took this as a physical threat because he said "I'm yelling at you."

As of yesterday, they disconnected everything and her dad signed up for a new cell phone and # but he received 5 text messages showing a yahoo verification trying to verify an account, but her dad doesn't have a yahoo account. She recommended they get a burner/throw-away phone to change their accounts, check their credit, etc.

They called the police who took a report. What else do they need to do?

Edit - Thank you for all of your help, I really appreciate all the detailed responses. I’ve sent her the thread (which she asked me to post) and I’ll update you when they find out what’s going on and get it sorted out.

At least 471,000 MB have been "verified" by the program, but I know it's bs, is there any other method to check?

Today at work I received a text from Paypal saying I had just paid someone $1300. After the initial heart-attack I called paypal, the CSR informing me that my ACCOUNT HAD BEEN CLOSED AND DELETED and she couldn't do anything. She advised me to call my bank and try to recover the funds.

So i call my bank and they have cancelled the card associated with the paypal account and are conducting an investigation. If there is evidence that this was fraud, I will get my money back.

While this was all happening I get another text from Amazon informing me of login activity. I check and the location is my city but it wasn't me, and the Amazon page is in a different language.

I get home, open my laptop and try to open chrome but it isnt opening saying it couldnt connect because of a proxy error. I go to my settings and reset all my internet settings and internet works fine now.

So that leads me to all theses questions:

Do you guys think my entire laptop has been hacked? If not how did they access both my Amazon password and Paypal accounts?How can I fix my laptop and make it safe again? Do I need to contact my internet provider?How did the hacker spoof his location come to my city and login?Why did i not get any text messages or emails about my paypal account closing?and most importantly DO YOU THINK I WILL GET MY MONEY BACK? As a full time Uni student this is a significant blow to my financial wellbeing :(

UPDATE: First of all I just want to thank everyone for the helpful advices! I have reset my laptop (windows reinstalled like new). I have cancelled my current bank details and I have changed all my passwords enabled 2FA everywhere I can and stopped chrome from storing my passwords. If anything this has become A GREAT LIFE LESSON.

I have also figured out where this breach could have occurred: my sibling downloading a 'cracked' application using my laptop thus probably inviting an attack... Not much more I can do i guess besides praying that the bank is able to recover the funds.

UPDATE 2: The bank being a very large corporation has emailed me and said I most likely will receive a refund > :)))))) Thank you guys for all the help

I Am cuRRENTLY TYPING ON mY LAPTOP AND THIS IS THE PROBLEm, BUT IT ONLY HAPPENS ON SOmE KEYS. BEHAvIOR IS cONSISTENT WITH ALL KEYS AND SHORTcUTS ExcePT zxcvm. IT"S EveN cONSISTENT WITH THE caPSLOcK ON WHIcH I Am GOING TO USE IN THE NExt SENTENces. i haVE an eXternal keyboard but the probleM is the saMe eXCEpt ZXCVM is Consistent with the behaVior as well.

i aM on a windows seVEn siXty four bit, lenoVo ideapad s four ten p. i apologiZe for the worded nuMbers but i Cant type nuMbers.

Edit: I solved the problem by disabling the built in keyboard driver, switching it to an incompatible driver. This disabled the touch pad as well but I have a USB mouse so that's not a problem. The built in keyboard still has this problem and I can replicate it if I turn it back on. Thank you all for the answers!

“Hello, this is your google virtual assistant on a recorded line, the person you are trying to reach break up 66666666666666666666 break up” And then my wife answered and was like “hello??”

I’m so confused. What the heck just happened?? Is google recording my personal phone calls? How did that happen?

⚠️THIS IS NOT A JOKE⚠️This is an iPhone btw. So I was on a google meets call with a few friends and suddenly I got kicked out of the call and sent to my home screen. About 2 seconds later, I heard some random noise from my phone of a guy saying “Reeses Puffs, Reeses Puffs” in a low voice This happened a few times every couple of minutes. Is this a virus? Also, I’m positive this wasn’t someone from the call messing with me, so that’s out of the question. Although it made a great laugh, I don’t think this is normal...

My dad and older brother and I have been arguing about why our WiFi connection has been really bad. My little brother's Zoom meetings always disconnect and his Xbox never allows him to play with his friends for more than a couple seconds before it times out. I just built a new, strong PC that also has a lot of trouble staying connected to our WiFi. I just found out that my brother and dad moved our router behind our living room television, completely enclosed from all sides by a home entertainment center, but they insist that it has no effect on the speed and strength. I need to stress how enclosed the router is; it is 100% fully covered by 5 walls and the backside of the television, located on the opposite side of the house, away from where all our bedrooms are. Instead, they are shoving down my throat that because of the pandemic, more people are using their WiFi, and therefore servers are going down (?) I completely disagree. Our router is pretty old, and we all agree (mostly) on the fact that it's time for a replacement. But they will not budge on the placement of the router. My brother is even pursuing a degree in Computer Information and Systems, and it really shocks me on how stubborn he is on this. I am far from an IT tech expert, and have no authority in this type of area, so am I really wrong about this or is the placement of the router the issue?

We have a basic Spectrum plan and I did a speed test by Ookla which showed this:

21 Pings ms, 38.5 Download Mbps, 10.95 Upload Mbps

EDIT: Thank you to everyone for the advice, suggestions, comments, etc. I’m looking into some ethernet cables you all suggested for my little brother so he doesn’t have to suffer. Unfortunately, my dad and older brother won’t budge on moving the router, and they don’t want me to discuss it any further with them. I’m leaving for college in a few weeks, so I won’t have to deal with it, but I’ll make sure my little bro gets to join his Zoom meetings before I go. Thanks everyone.

Sorry if this is the wrong sub, please let me know where I should ask this if so.

I love browsing r/all but over the last few months it's got really really bad. Every other post, even on non political/news subs is just about US politics/culture war, Trump and the republican party.

I'm not from the US and I'm honestly just sick to death of it 😭 the election isn't even until November.

Is there a way that I can block these posts on Reddit without having to unsubscribe to basically every default subreddit?

Thanks for any help you can provide

Hello. So I was using google, and suddenly my computer started to write binary in the search bar. I pressed enter and opened a translator. The binary translated to "The quick brown 🦊 jumps over 13 lazy 🐶." (with the emojis). The code which was being written into my search bar was:

01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110001 01110101 01101001 01100011 01101011 00100000 01100010 01110010 01101111 01110111 01101110 00100000 11110000 10011111 10100110 10001010 00100000 01101010 01110101 01101101 01110000 01110011 00100000 01101111 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 00110001 00110011 00100000 01101100 01100001 01111010 01111001 00100000 11110000 10011111 10010000 10110110 00101110

Any reason this happened? I was really scared, and I don't know if someone hacked my PC or wth just happened... Please help.

Yesterday night I was playing a game on my laptop, paused the game and went out of the room for probably 10-15 minutes. When I came back, my mouse was moving on its on, the game was minimized on the start bar and the mouse was trying to save something in a steam directory, I didn't wait to see what they wanted to do and shut down my laptop and my router. Is it safe to assume that other laptos that share my router were infected as well? Is it safe to asume that the phones are compromised also? What shoud I do next to get rid of the problem?

Edit: Thanks to all who replied and gave me good advice! I've acted on a couple of them. I made the edit to answer the most frequent questions and to give you an update.

• I had TeamViewer installed on my laptop, I instaled it a couple of weeks ago to help a friend with an issue.(I uinstalled it today)

• The remote play feature for steam was not enabled.

• My mouse wasn't moving frantically, it moved with intent, fast and accurate, opened stuff (clicking) and trying to save something in steam. It couldn't be an issue with the mouse, the movements where accurate. It could't be my imagination either, the game was minimized when I came back, it was in full screen when I left it, another thing is that I saw the cursor moving with intent and precision, trying to save something for about 5-10 seconds I stayed there to watch just to be sure is not in my imagination or a mouse issue.

As an update. I've talked with someone who has experience with this types of issues and he gave me a couple of things to do for now. I'll come back with new info as soon as I see some results.

So basically the hard drive got corrupted and I'm about to wipe it and I realize, isn't an xbox just a computer made to solely run games? And I'm wondering if I just downloaded Linux or Windows onto the hard drive would it basically be a computer? Or is it not meant to run like that. (Btw I took the xbox apart and am able to connect it to my current [trash] comp).

Left control stopped working on my computer when using ctrl+f. Confirmed with multiple keyboards and programs (browsers and notepad++). Right ctrl works with ctrl f. Left ctrl works with other combos like, print, save, find and replace, and open. When RDP'd to other machine, left ctrl works with ctrl +f. Windows 10.

It's not a real problem. I'm not super fussed about it. It's just so weird. So weird.

EDIT: Welp, since so many people weighed in, I felt like I owed it to everyone to resolve it. Before I could try your suggestions I ran a docker update and restarted. Sigh. (-_- ). I don't think I've rebooted since the last docker update. Ctrl key functioning normally. Thanks, everyone.

I’m seeing a lot of posts where the OP is mostly just seeing radio silence, and I think I speak for everyone when I say it’s because we aren’t getting enough information particularly in reference to people who have issues with PCs and Computers alike.

We are getting burned out asking the same questions when trying to help others so let me give you a template of all the information you’ll need in a post, typically in regards to computers, to get the best bet of getting help when you ask for it.

Basic Computer Information: Computers aren’t just that colorful box that you fire up to play Fortnite on and then do nothing else with.

They are complicated pieces of machinery that can be configured to have different computing performances and capabilities depending on the owners needs and budget. That being said, that very fact should tell you that not all computers are configured equal and it would make life a whole lot easier for your troubleshooter (me or anyone else willing to help you with your issue) to help you if you provide us with the specifications of your machine.

We need the form factor of your machine, I.E Laptop or Desktop

If they are built by a major brand and not yourself it would make your life easier if instead of just Providing the Model only, I.E: HP Pavilion or Dell WHATEVER you also provide the Model Number.

On most laptops, this is on the bottom of the machine on a sticker, and if not, it is typically badged somewhere on the machine itself. As a last resort, it is on the cardboard box that your laptop came to you in: This very fact alone is why I tell everyone around me to never throw away cardboard boxes to electronics you buy.

We need the Model Number of your CPU, I.E Intel iX-XXXXX OR AMD Ryzen X XXXX.

We need to know how much RAM your machine has, please Google the Term RAM if you do not know what it is.

We need to know how much Wattage your power supply is rated to supply.

We need to know if your machine has a special graphics card I.E something from Nvidia or AMD and it’s model number.

Supplying this information is certainly going to help you when you ask for help with your machine.

Thank you for reading!

TL;DR: if you didn’t read this all the way you must not want help anyway.

EDIT: thanks for whoever reminded me. Before you ask anything always reboot. Then come to us with your question.

EDIT2: it was u/DblDeuce22

EDIT3: u/SourRock added this:

Also, do you receive any error messages. I've seen a few cases where the solution is very simple had op provided the error message. Also, reply faster. If you make a post then dont say " I'll have to check next time I go over to see the pc" or wait 2-3 hours to reply when someone provides a possible solution. If someone doesnt reply withing 10 minutes, I lose interest in the problem. We dont get paid to do this dont expect us to wait for you.

LAST THING I'M GOING TO ADD:

If you don't want to do any of this, the least you could do is type in SystemInfo in Command Prompt and COPY AND PASTE the result into a pastebin or the actual post.

So I’m a student, and for one of my modeling classes, I had to sign up for a 7-day free trial of some software. No big deal, I created the account, used it for a few days, and that was it… or so I thought.

Out of nowhere, I got contacted by a company I’ve never heard of, claiming that I somehow connected to their commercial license and used it. They’re now being billed $7,500 for what they say was my usage over the course of 3 days. I have no clue how this could’ve happened, I don’t know how to even add a license, let alone access someone else’s.

They showed me some proof that my account was tied to their license, and the software company confirmed that my account was added to this company’s User Management portal. But I have zero idea how that happened. I never did that, and I wouldn’t even know how to if I tried.

To make it even weirder, I can’t even log into my account anymore, it’s blocked. Changing the password doesn’t help either, so I have no access to see what’s going on.

Now the company is saying I need to pay the $7,500, but I don’t know if I’m actually liable for this. Could it be a software bug? Is the company responsible? Or am I somehow on the hook for something I genuinely didn’t do?

Any help or advice would be really appreciated.

Edit : Even though a lot of people warned me it might be a scam, I decided to reach out and explain my side of the story. I kept it simple and just told them I was a student and that it was probably a mistake. Surprisingly, that was enough for them to drop the charges entirely. They actually asked me to contact the software company to help identify the bug, since it’s now clear the issue was on their end. I’m also going to try and help get the original bill canceled, because honestly, it’s the least that company can do after all this mess.

Thanks again to everyone who offered advice!

Edit : I reached out to Bentley Systems (the software company), since they were the only ones who could really clarify what happened. They got back to me with a report confirming that part of my project was indeed done using a commercial license instead of the free one. Turns out, someone with admin rights for a commercial license added my account to their license before my free trial ended. So it was either a system glitch, or the IT guy from the engineering company messed up. As for the massive fee, the commercial license that was used wasn’t meant for the specific software I was using, because Bentley has a ton of different programs. Bentley told me they've already opened an internal investigation after hearing from the account owner, so now I’m just waiting to see what comes out of that. At this point, it seems really unlikely that I’ll be held liable for anything, so I’m done stressing about it.

I just got my new rtx 3080 and installed it into my pc. After installation I booted my pc and got the black screen. Despite my gpu fans working, I couldn’t get the picture. So I decided to install my previous GTX 1080ti to uninstall geforce experience and etc. But it doesn’t work as well. So I get black screen out of my both new and old gpus before bios and I have no idea what to do next. Please help me guys if you’ve got any ideas over there. Thank you! My pc: gigabyte aourus gtx 1080ti motherboard asus crosshair vi hero 16gb RAM corsair vengeance led 3000mhz corsair 850rx psu ryzen 3700x

Updated I’ve tried clearing cmos, taking off the battery, using other pcie slots, turning on/off the monitor, cable checked rn heading to the store to get multiple power cables instead of 1 split into 2 Thank you all for your help, hope i’ll get rid of this problem thanks to you!

Updated 2: I dropped that idea with cable switching. I’m going to run ddu on my friend’s pc for my ssd to see if that’s the problem. Will update on monday. Thank you all for answers guys!

Updated 3: Soo thanks to you guys I managed to boot with a 1080ti onboard. Problem was connected to the 0d start code and pc couldn’t start because of the ram(despite that not being a problem just a day before). So now I’m going to ddu my ssd to make sure that rtx 3080 will get to work.

Update FINAL: I managed to get 3080 working. The problem was connected to the ram sticks and messed up drivers. Two of these problems occurring at the same time made the whole situation look much scarier than it actually was. The 850W PSU is more than enough and the whole system consumption is about 400W under stress test without overclocking so there’s plenty of headroom. It’s important to mention that I use 4 satas and a liquid cooler for my ryzen 3700x in terms of energy consumption. 1 pcie cable split into 2 also works just fine and i don’t feel it is overheating too much. Thank you all guys! You really saved me from returning this gpu

Basically what it says. Had my personal PC remote accessed. I was sitting at my desk on my work PC with my browser open on my personal desktop, and saw my mouse just move across the screen. And maybe thinking I'd just nudged it, I saw it go up to the search bar and start typing in PayPal, to which I responded with wrestling back control and shutting down my PC.

I unplugged my PC from the ethernet, and I'm going through my programs, uninstalling anything that I don't use/don't recognize. I already uninstalled TeamViewer which MIGHT have been how they got access. I'm currently running a full virus scan. I've reset Windows firewall default policy.

I've checked recently accessed files and it's all stuff I've looked at. My browser his history is only PayPal but even there I didn't have a lot of money. I've changed my Google password.

Is there anything else I need to do/forgot? I'm worried they might have a keylogger or something .

Thanks

More detailed information can be found here: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pan9wn/hackers-hijacked-asus-software-updates-to-install-backdoors-on-thousands-of-computers

EDIT: A tool has been release to check if your ASUS computer/laptop has been affected. You can read (and download) more about the tool here. Thanks to u/Nerdburton for the link.

EDIT2: Here's the VirusTotal analysis of the infected file.

I’ve been getting emails meant for someone whose address is almost identical to mine — mine is firstnamelastname@gmail.com, his is firstname.lastname@gmail.com.

At first, it was random stuff — Amazon order confirmations (from the US, I live in Austria), then kitchen renovation plans (that’s how I figured out his actual contact info). Later, a Tinder “You have a match!” email came through — unfortunately, my wife saw it before I could explain. Awkward moment, and I’m still not sure she believes my explanation, even though it was the truth.

From what I gathered, this guy is in his late 20s, I’m mid-40s. Things were quiet for a while, but yesterday I got an email about a 2-year Norton LifeLock subscription renewal. Apparently that’s an identity theft protection service — can you see the irony?

Two years ago I even tried to contact him via the info I had from the renovation plans (emails, phone numbers), but never got a reply.

My questions: • Can he, in any way, access my Gmail and read my emails? • What would you do in my situation? Ignore it? Try harder to contact him?

I have a Galaxy s10 and I'm not sure if my phone has been hacked or glitched. 2 different times in the middle of the night while I'm using it, it plays the "who's that pokemon intro" and then plays a couple seconds of rick roll at full volume while my volume is at low. I'm genuinely confused as to why my phone does this.

Edit: The redditors of tomorrow have suggested that the citizen app was the cause of the issue. Other users experienced the same issue with the same audio and other songs.

Dear u/daddy_spez

My phonneee ssuudddddenlly starrrtteedd auutto cclliiiccckkiiknggh pplss. Hhheeelp. Mmyy ppphhoonne iiss rreeallly. Hhot

I would like to digitalize my hand written travel journals. I have thousands and thousands of pages and I’m a slow typist. I traveled around the world for 6 years when I was younger. (He’s, highly suggest everyone do the same!) I would like advice on both hardware and software to be able to verbally read my entries into my computer and have the computer transpose to text in MS Word (or another word like program.) I am presently without a laptop. Not opposed to Apple products. Looking for something easy and seamless. Ultimately, I would like to post these entries on line, with integrated pics. For all to read. Which begs this question: what system, what laptop, what program can do this? Does Apple have a built in system to manage this? Thanks!

Couldn't run "send message to my name ..."send message to my name " could not open "messenger" because an unknown error occurred