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Master Baiter Joined: 07 Oct 2008 Posts: 200 Location: UK

A friend of mine has just noticed that a load of emails between her and a third party are missing from her hotmail account.

To give a bit of background - this third party was a friend of hers who regularly had access to her house and her computer. He was subsequently arrested as a result of a complaint she made. As soon as he was arrested she changed her password and started using a different computer (in fact the police had her computer). However over the last few days she has noticed that stuff concerning this chap has disappeared from her PC. Her network is secure; she has changed her password so how else can he be accessing her emails?

She is very worried that he has access to this machine, but has no idea how he might be doing it. Can anyone assist, please?

Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2010 12:00 pm

He may have dropped a keylogger on her machine.

Safest thing to do is a total reformat.

Master Baiter Joined: 07 Oct 2008 Posts: 200 Location: UK

Thanks Slightly. I did wonder if that was the case. However she swears blind that he never used THAT machine since it belonged to her son. I am beginning to think he has "guessed" her secret questions. Either way, she is beefing up her security (both house and PC).

Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2010 2:01 pm

She might want to change the password from a secure PC, e.g. at a trusted friend's place, and not use it on her PC for the time being.

Is this correct, stuff disappears from her Hotmail account as well as from her PC?

What antivirus and security software is running on the PC in question?

Are we talking about a Windows PC? A quick scan with a free antivirus such as ClamWin or AntiVir, as well as a run of RootkitRevealer might help.
(Obviously the removal of the malware will also make a criminal investigation much harder.)

Another approach would be to use a network sniffer to see if there's any network traffic that shouldn't be there.

Is she using a WLAN, and if yes, is it encrypted with WPA/WPA2 using a strong password?

Let me know if I should elaborate on anything.

Master Baiter Joined: 07 Oct 2008 Posts: 200 Location: UK

Thanks Bankster, I shall ask her those questions (most of them I don't know the answer to).

Trophy Videos · Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 2:55 am

Were the son's and your pc in the same house, when he had access to it? He could not only have put a keylogger on your machine, but your son's, too.
Or, if they were networked together, the infection could have moved to the son's pc via the network? Possible, Bankster?

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 7:19 am

^^ Unlikely, but not entirely impossible. If he's sly enough he'll just install it manually on both computers.

At any rate, have the computers checked.