Ben Hovinga

You or someone you know may have been a victim of account hacking viruses. I am going to show you how to spot it and fix it.

I am going to use facebook as an example because a friends facebook account has recently been hacked but this example can apply to just about any account like msn, twitter, even your bank account.

How It Happens

On a recent attack on my friends facebook account, one of his friends account has been hacked. This hacked account sent mass messages to his/her friends on facebook with a link to go see a video, and posted on his/her wall the same link. This link took my friend to a fake youtube page, a page that looks like youtube but is at a different web address, and then a pop-up opened saying that you needed to download software to see this video. My friend installed this software but later found out that it took over his facebook, this virus did the same thing as his friend, sent messages and links. But there is a deeper function, most of the time that is just to spread the virus around the web, the real function of the virus could be to steal information of destroy data on your computer.

Preventing Infection

Well now that you know what happens its pretty simple to see how to prevent any infection. I would say not to click on any link but that would contradict the point to sharing websites like facebook. Just be aware of the link address and the content, if the website looks like youtube but doesn’t have the http://www.youtube.com in the address bar then don’t click on it. If a website wants you to download software to view a video or photo don’t allow it to. Get away from that website as soon as you can, and tell your friend that their account may have been hacked then give them a link to this post so they can fix it.

Fixing The Problems

Well if you have been infected then you will need to fix it. Don’t create a new account and delete the old one because that wont fix anything, that will just delete everything you have and the virus can take over your new account. The first step is to scan your computer for viruses. avast! antivirus home edition is a good, free antivirus program that I personally have been using with no problems ever. After the virus has been removed from the computer all you need to do is change your password. To make a secure password you can use a password generator but that uses makes a password of random letters and numbers and it can be hard to remember. An easy way to make a secure password that you can remember is to make sure it is at least 8 characters long and contains at least one upper case letter one lower case and one number. For extra security you could add a symbol too. After all of this, make sure that you contact your friends not to click on the links and to tell them to read this if they have.

Do you gamble a lot and run out of money fast? You need to do the max money glitch. This may also work in other games.

Ever wanted to have a Diablo II LAN party? Never had the patience to install it on all of your friends computers? Want to play Diablo II from any computer in your house and still have your same character? This is the solution to all of your problems. This how to will guide you through installing Diablo II on a network computer, setup sharing, and setup the other computers in your house to play.

Last year my media studies teacher wanted to do a small Internet assignment involving a video from YouTube. Little did she know that YouTube was on the inappropriate for school list and was blocked. After being embarrassed for a whole of five minutes, she told the class to pack their stuff up and go back to the class. I told her to hold off for another minute or two. That whole time that she was trying to get the website to work and failing I was actually succeeding in that task. I put a copy of portable FireFox in the class folder and told the class to use that instead of Internet Explorer. Because FireFox was not setup to use a proxy at all you could access any website you wanted. After that class I got called down to the office to get my computer privleges revoked for a week for finding a way around the school blocker and another week of detentions for telling the students in my class. It would have been more if my media teacher did not stand up for me and explain why I did what I did.

This year the school got a new proxy blocker that is actually board wide. This new proxy is setup through hardware not software like the old one and now FireFox is just another tool to view a red screen that says blocked.

Over the cource of the semester I have been making attemps to bypass it, coming close a few times but in the end all failures. The way I have been attempting is by use of a program that can be installed on a USB drive like FireFox was. Many people ask why I don’t just use a proxy website like the rest of students wanting to use facebook. I just tell them, “Because those websites can be blocked and they never display the page 100% as you would see it at home.” My theaory is to get a program to encrypt what I am sending and tunnle through to my computer at home, use my home internet connection to get the site and send it all back encrypted again.

But why do schools and organizations block all of these websites? Tony makes several good points in his article Blocking students on school network is wrong.