10 ms·
I cancelled all cards and did what i could for the finance company. putting a freeze or security on her investment account required her to have to go to a bank(
by vonklaus 10y ago
I cancelled all cards and did what i could for the finance company. putting a freeze or security on her investment account required her to have to go to a bank(or other official notary accepted by the firm) and verify her identity and then mail a letter to the company to authorize transfer. so all the accounts were cancelled/cards reordered but freezing her account would be a huge impediment as she makes transfers every few weeks to live. the cards/ect from initial breach i am not particularly worried about. but to your second point:
> The OS should also be reinstalled from scratch, after backing up any pictures or documents and reformatting the disk.
I removed both ram cahces and replaced them as well as the harddrive with another entirely reset windows 10 install i had laying around.
HOWEVER, she is reasonably tech savvy for 80 uses computer everyday, ect, but she was having trouble adapting and begged me to put win7 back on. I simply swapped hard drives back, so there has been 0 diagnostics run on the current drive except a single full system scan done by the microsoft virus program, although, again, she said they installed it (it does look like real MS) but maybe they just added an exception. I figured I would do damage control, and let her use current OS for now(told her not to do online shopping haha) while I try to assess full risk.
- devopsproject 10y agoYou should also freeze her credit: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faqs https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faq...
- vonklaus 10y agogood idea. is lifelock worth getting? also, the random 888 number likeky is disconnected, their website is just nginx which i think dynamically creates temp sites for whoever they are scamming ect, and then disappears, the payment was made to a canadian acct. is it worth trying to report this? there isn't real data to hand off to identitytheft.gov.
- devopsproject 10y agoI am not lifelock fan, they have a terrible reputation: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/07/21/lifelock-shares-tank-after-ftc-alleges-continued-wrongdoing/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/07/21...
- vessenes 10y agoThis is a terrible thing to do; there's no way she won't be back in their system at some point. Seriously. If need be, buy her a chromebook and walk her through what she needs to learn. But, Windows 7, and previously compromised together is not any kindness.
- vonklaus 10y agothanks. This was my concern. I have mitigated short term risk (next 2 weeks ish) so I am just trying to assess whether it is worth freaking her out and dumping the whole system. i already did but as an 80 y/o she didn't adjsut super well to having hackers breach her PC, have all new passwords for her stuff, and trying to use a new OS. So i removed the HD with windows 10, and put the old original HD back in with win7. wanted to know how serious others thought risk was before I escalated.
- facorreia 10y agoSo, I'd at least do a clean install of Windows 7 on that spare HD.