Protecting myself from an obsessive person that uses keyloggers.

Fireflash

Hello!

TL DR: There's a very small chance that someone shady could've installed a keylogger on my or my gf's computer. All I have is avast antivirus and I'm wondering if I need to take extra steps to make sure our computers (pc and mac) are clean of such programs.

If you want to know about the creepy details, read on.

So there's this guy I know, we hung out a couple of times but never were close friends. More of a friend of a friend. Let's call him Tom.

Went to a show with other friends I hadn't seen in a while. 2 of them had been friends with Tom for a long time 1 guy Bob who was Tom's roommate for a few years and 1 girl Lisa, for whom Tom seemed to have a crush on for a long time . I noticed that Tom wasn't there and asked them why since I knew he liked the band we were going to see. They told me they had cut off contact with him a few months ago, this is why:

You see sometimes odd things would happen in arguments or conversations where Tom would speak with personal knowledge of things that he shouldn't know, unless somehow some gossip made it to him. It happened a bit too much for it to be simply gossip spreading and they started getting suspicious. After some investigation and questioning they found out that Tom has a keylogger on his own computer, so that anyone who uses his pc leaves traces of anything they've done. Lisa also found out from a technician she sent the pc too that a keylogger had been installed on her computer and removed. ( tom knew she was about to send the pc for maintenance and offered to try and "solve her issues".) She also found out that at some point Tom tried to learn about something that had happened by impersonating Lisa online and trying to talk to the other person involved.

So yeah I always thought this guy was a nice guy but he seems obsessed with knowing everything about what anyone says or think when he's not there, and he apparently doesn't see a problem with that. He's been to my place a few times in the past, so I'm a little creeped out. I don't think he'd use keyloggers to steal money from people or actually cause harm, since he's actually a very generous and helpful person, but I really don't like they idea that he could read my personal conversations.

Also today my gf decided to remove him from facebook since she barely knew him anyways and only a few minutes later she received an email from him asking why she had removed him and that he found it offensive that someone would take the effort to remove someone from their friend's list...

I'm just gonna stay away from him. It just itches me that I know he spends a lot of time with another girl I know a bit. I'm not that much of a friend with her (she was in my extended crew of friends years ago, I only talk to her occasionally when we end up in the same parties.) but I don't like the idea that he could potentially have her logins and be reading through her pritave conversations. Then again I don't have his side of the story and I'm not one to spread shit on people.

EclecticGroove

Honestly?

Format any pc he had access to if any, and change passwords.

Don't open any links from him or people you don't know, and don't run/open any attachments you aren't expecting to get. This includes Instant messengers and Facebook accounts as well. Even if it is coming from a "friend" but looks suspicious, it could be a compromised account.

Also make sure your network is secure, no wide open WiFi networks and the like.
Which is all basic stuff you should be doing anyways.

If he's that much of a creepy stalker he could still find a way into the PC if he's good/dedicated enough, but honestly there is only so far you should go without good reason.

And under no circumstances should you ever let him get access to your computer or anything, even if he's just "checking his e-mail" because he happened to come over with some other friends. It only takes a moment to install many keyloggers, and honestly all he'd need to do is double click an attachment or browse to a web page if he'd set everything up beforehand.

Capt Howdy

Going to second the format advice. Nuke it from orbit, its the only way to be sure. Eclectic nailed it.

MushroomStick

Go ahead and format the computers if it'll help you sleep at night, but to be honest this sounds a lot like people underestimating how much info someone can pull from a Facebook news feed to me.

EclecticGroove

MushroomStick wrote: »

Go ahead and format the computers if it'll help you sleep at night, but to be honest this sounds a lot like people underestimating how much info someone can pull from a Facebook news feed to me.

That's always possible. But the impersonating on messenger and the tech saying there was evidence of a keylogger + the fact that he was obviously privileged to information they thought was private is at least a decent suspicion of him being up to no good.

Keyloggers (even ones that report over the internet) really are not hard to come by, and don't take much skill to install and use. It's a bit better to take a day to make sure your computer and accounts are secure if he's been on your pc(s) before than to be wrong and have him wreak havoc on them.

Ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure and all that.

Cabezone

Reformatting isn't as painful as people think and it's the very best way to be rid of such things. Ideally everyone reformats once a year anyway just for performance on PC's.

cmsamo

There are also a bunch of different Firefox addons that can exploit cookies and get you into Facebook profiles and gmail etc if you haven't logged out and cleaned your cookies. (I was reading about them today due to a security issue of my own) so its also possible this person is not using key loggers but known cookie exploits to get access to profile pages etc... Or even just using the pc after someone else who forgot to log out, and gettinh logged in as the first person automatically - my gf always forgets to log out with our pc/iPad.

Nuking from orbit and the hassle of a format seems excessive without actual proof of a virus or common key logger, but hey, whatever makes you comfortable dude.

cmsamo

And I should add - there are a lot of great sites out there that tell you how you can protect yourself from these secure logon and cookie type exploits. I myself usually run CCleaner after browsing, and always try and use https logon pages where possible

Fireflash

Yeah maybe I'll just format, it,s been a while anyways. From now on I think I'm going to keep my pc locked when not in use. That way at least I'll know if a guests wants/needs to use my computer.

bowen

Windows Key + L, use a password for logging in and out of your computer, fresh install. Make sure you change the password on all your accounts today. Banks, IM accounts, etc.

Wireless password, cycle your password once every few months.

Jebus314

Cabezone wrote: »

Reformatting isn't as painful as people think and it's the very best way to be rid of such things. Ideally everyone reformats once a year anyway just for performance on PC's.

^This. If it's just a basic web surfing conputer it should only be a few hours for a full format/reinstall. Provided you have all of the info handy. You will spend way more time than that researching anti-keylogging software/rootkit finders/best av software ect...