How do I clean up after someone's broken into my computer?

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One tip you left out, which helps a little with physical security--set a BIOS password. Also, if you are worried about booting from a floppy, some BIOS's have a setting to disallow booting from a floppy or they at least allow you to specify booting from the hard drive first.

Never mind cleaning up, you have had that computer for 5 or 6 years, its prehistoric!

Do yourself a favour, give the old one to charity, or sell it on ebay, and get a new one. You will thank yourself for doing so. The difference will be huge, it will be soooo much faster you wont believe it.

ken
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If you value the data on the machine, then a reformat is your ONLY option. Otherwise the intruder could have loaded a "rootkit" (look it up on google), which is essentially impossible to find. At this point, you don't own your computer, the bad guys own your machine, and you'll never be able to get rid of them (short of a reformat). They can use your machine to send spam, they can use your machine to attack other people, they can use your machine to host kiddy porn (and then you've got to explain to the police what the kiddy porn was doing on your computer (this is a very real threat, it's happened in the past (see: http://ask-leo.com/d-41012a for details)).

The list of things that a sophisticated hacker can do to make your life unpleasant is quite large.

Btw, Leo's list of "day 1" suggestions is quite good (as always).

[editted link through redirector - ln]

Anti-Burn Proceedures for the sake of those at disarray of a smart hacker:

Change your IP Address.

Don't BackUp if you think it's tainted --
Get some reliable help to sort through your current -vs- backups... try to rebuild from BU.
-- Some are familiar with a BU Plan and some aren't -- Depending on security issues; contact several security persons about this issue, then decide how you're going to proceed.
***For those that don't know - Don't trust just a few others - Do your homework.

Your best defense: BackUp often, and in different areas/formats!

If you donate your PC, make sure that you remove the hard drive if you have personal info on it. Information is not necessarily deleted from a hard drive just because you hit the delete button

can you help me beacuase someone has changed my password and my secret question. i would get a new account but i havnt saved my addys and i have loads what do i do?

That's this article: http://ask-leo.com/ive_forgotten_the_answer_to_my_msn_hotmail_secret_question_and_my_password_what_do_i_do.html

Clean-Computer.org - Free computer clean up of hard drive of spyware, adware and registry. Get firewall anti-virus patches remove Spyware.

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best advice is to download: zone alarm, adaware, and spybot search and destroy, and nortan anti virus. Disconnect from the internet take of any programs or folders that u dont need anymore of look a lil sus. Install all those programs and set them up, change your ip address. Download all the latest updates then back ofline and scan your computer clean. Also try and back up those valuable files.If u do want a new computer get 1 then load all that stuff onto it so that they cant access it again. If they continually do it and you cant fix it theres allways the good old baseball bat visit them aproach :P

Is it easy for someone to brake in my email account and change the password? I'm trying to get in my yahoo account when I know that I have the password and id. It does not work....I think someone has changed my password but, how. Would they have to be a computer genious to change it?

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