Poll: Has you computer ever been hacked?

I dont think so.
I do know that my hotmail and yahoo accounts have been.
I have had spam mail with subjects and senders that are from people
that I have in my mail lists - but its obvious since they use the
full name and not the crazy things my friends and family use.
its like when I am on yahoo, and go to make a comment and they
want me to sign on with them - nope - just one more place where I dont
need my data spreading out - at least on my own terms.
I know there is a lot out there that has been snatched and/or put together
by the companies that do that and sell to manufacturers for their focus ad's

that 60 minutes (3/9/14) showed more than I realized on how big it has
gotten - and all legal... you have no idea how much they have - - - -

I've teed-off a rather nasty little Internet troll who, it turns out, also has some hacker skills. He broke into my mail account -- and then was stupid enough to boast of what he found on an unrelated site, a copy of which I have retained.

He also got into my machine to the extent that he was messing with my system configuration. I had to spend an hour finding the damage and resetting it. This alone identifies him as a kid, and a pretty gutless hacker. I suppose he may already realize he's managed to attract the attention of authorities.

I don't think he realizes I'm a computer security professional. More fool him. I'm going to enjoy seeing him in the dock answering to Federal wire fraud charges. Oh yes -- he was stupid enough to do this under his real name, then a string of childish IDs as I had the prior ones shut down. Absolutely no sense of self-preservation, and no maturity. We'll see what ten to fifteen in a Federal prison does for that. If he gets out alive.

Nemo me impune lacessit. That last brick is going to feel SO fine going in.

---->P!

If you stay behind hardware & software firewalls and keep a good antimalware program up to date, you can pick up a virus or malware, but you should be pretty safe from hackers. It helps to keep away from sites you don't know anything about, and these days you have to be extremely careful where you download from. This especially means keep away from download.com!

My computer itself was never hacked. I use Zone Alarm Extreme Internet Security and have server disabled. The only thing that has been hacked was my PayPal account which I used my credit card to add funds. My credit card company straighten out the problem. The insane thing PayPal has is you could use your bank account to add funds. Anyone who uses their bank account on PayPal must be out of their mind.

Regular updates to Avira Free. Along with Malwarebytes and Spybot S&D. All have served to protect my PC for many years.

I'm just (reluctantly) building a s/h PC for Windows 7... just in case XP does get hit... by people who have nothing better to do. So I hope my usual protection will still work.

And YES... I will be avoiding 'The Cloud' like the plague.

Perhaps I should still run my old XP machine, WITHOUT Protection, Loaded with every nasty that the world has created - and every Hacker-Tracker known... lets get our own back on the hackers...!!!

I once visited a Russian website seeking the Russian text to some music that I had heard. I was running Norton at that time. Soon after, I begin to notice copies of email from someone in an office in Moscow showing up in my email box. After a couple of weeks, I received a phone call from PayPal stating that someone had authorized the transfer of a large sum of money to an account in Australia. After verifying that I did not authorize any such transaction, PayPal stopped the transaction and took steps to notify the feds. I was annoyed that they did not credit my bank account for several more weeks, until, I assume, they verified that the transaction was a hack. Yet, I was quite grateful for their help.

Since then, I have beefed up my firewall/antivirus/antimalware installation, and I vowed not to visit any Russian website ever again. Thanks to the astute monitors at PayPal, I did not lose any money, and needless to say, I got no more copies of email from the Moscow office. (Interestingly enough, the emails were written in Russian and English!--go figure!).

I avoid social media like the plague it truly is, and I don't 'do' any websites marked as suspicious by my software. Hence, so far, knock on wood, no problems.

- I'm often surprised when I used to fix computers how many toolbars people would have in their browsers. Then I realize that some software installers would encourage (pre-check yes) to having these toolbars installed. The user must take more care to read what is being installed instead of just clicking next > next > next. If you want the toolbar, install it SEPARATELY. No software should have to 'sneak' install software that is wanted.

- I don't use social websites unless necessary to login to a site or to condut business. In the early days, MySpace was notorious for having malware (the user's webpages would be injected with spyware). It's much better now, but avoid installing extensions or software that you are unfamiliar what the purpose of it is.

- I use a 3rd party firewall (comodo) which alerts me each time any software attempts to connect in or out. I manually approve each software. I don't just auto-approve, and I do not assign permanent approval until I am confident that the software is legit.

Windows firewall isn't bad, but it sucks at auto-approval. Microsoft does not encourage users to take any personal responsibility for what is connecting in/out (only recently over the last 4-5 years). But this isn't about Microsoft, this is about you.

I've been using my own separate firewall since win2000 days, where windows did not have its own firewall and left all these ports open to be exploited. I'm very comfortable with 'always alert me' settings. It's not annoying because after you permanently approve your common applications, you rarely see any new popups (unless you have a new piece of [approved] software.

On my macbook, I used little snitch. same concept: I need to know what is coming in/out and make a choice to allow it or not. Not sure what linux users would use.

Even with awareness, it is still possible to be fooled every now and then. But especially with a firewall with auto-approve DISABLED, even if you do manage to install something malicious it cannot call back home unless you allow it.

I don't respond to anyone that I haven't met offline whether it's chat or Skype or email. I don't click on suspicious links, even if they're from familiar addresses. If I think, gosh, my friend doesn't write like this (misspellings or unusual excitement) then I verify by calling my friend or if it's from a bank I check google for keywords to see if a scam has been identified.

Depends on whether you consider picking malware hacked. No one has gained access to my computer but I did get some serious malware, a worm and a trojan, circa '06 and '08. Right after I learned to use a computer. Both were running XP. One on an old 356 chip machine and the other on a P-4 HP machine. I've avoided anything since as I learned how to be safe online. Thus I've had nothing but a little adware on the desktop I built in '09. Which I upgraded to Win7 Pro 64 bit a year ago. Since the MoBo died on the desktop, I've picked up a refurb Thinkpad with Win7 Pro 32 bit to use till next winter when I plan to do a major hardware upgrade on the desktop.

I don't need "help" from hackers, I can bring my computers to their digital knees all by myself. Microsoft should hire me as a torture-tester.

Many years ago I was playing Ultima online and a fellow player got into it ( he wanted me to fight. Which in the game would allow him to loot0. He got my IP and started a ping that would start when I logged on the internet.
My son was playing some pre-release games with a bunch of security geeks. They shut him down and said it would be a long time before he got back on. Something about the congressional record.

1. Downloaded VLC Media Player from Download.com at about 1000. Lost partial control of my computer for about 6 hours of struggle.

2. start-search-us-com (name slightly "Travoltified" for safety) then took over my browsers several times over the cleanup process. Tricky little devil! my solo attempts to clean did not work, so I "Googled" for help. Downloaded adwcleaner ("Travoltified") also from Download.com. This program largely worked but installed jotzey and 3 other programs in the process.

3. In the end what worked: Stop, look, don't trust, overkill. Approximate sequence of failures and success.
Uninstalled Firefox browser and supporting programs through Control panel.
Used control panel to find newly installed programs (search by DATE!!) and uninstall with Microsoft whenever possible. Went here about 30 times by the time I finished.
Downloaded Malwarebites and Superantispyware free programs (amazingly from CNET). Cleaned several times with these programs but first time got most. Okay.
4. Re-downloaded Firefox/Mozilla and installed. Okay.
5. Re-checked Control panel programs for uninstall. Okay.
6. Firefox Mozilla and Internet Explorer were then used to check then delete suspicious cookies, history, web pages, favourites.
7. Emptied Recycle Bin.

Now I think that I will check again. BTW is Adaware still a problem download?

Linux is used in this household -- although servers are a different story, PCs are quite safe.

Yes, back in 2004, I was using a program (I don't remember which one) that allowed me to download movies for free. Unfortunately, the way it was done was by other users that had the movie loaded on their computer. All computers needed to be on in order to tap into their computer to download a movie. The problem was that the computer that one was connected to, to download a movie, if it had a virus on it guess what, you got that virus downloaded as well and it infected other computers through your computer or theirs. This virus literally wiped out my anti-virus program and any other program that had an .exe extension making mine and my wife's computer unusable (since we both shared a network). I had to literally, reformat my hard drives (both computers) and re-load everything. Took me the better part of three days. Of course, after I got both computers back up, I never went to that site again and install a new anti-virus program that I have been using for the last 14 years. Peer-to-Peer? Never again. I have actually set my anti-virus program to disable any peer-to-peer connections.

Mistake. There should only be two choices, "yes" and "I don't know".

No. I use KIS to secure my PC!