Hello,
Well I just spent about an hour with Avast support and to say I am disappointed is an understatement. The person either didn’t understand what I was writing, wasn’t actually reading what I wrote, or was blowing me off. VERY frustrating to say the least.
Here is the issue and go easy as I don’t understand techy stuff and hacking, etc.
My daughter has Avast on her computer (it is the free version that came with it. I have the paid version but she forgot to put it on her computer.)
She had photos that I took on her phone.
She did a direct transfer to her computer through the cable.
She posted ONE of these photos to her Whatsapp profile and the same ONE to her FB page. NO OTHER photos from the 50 I took were posted ANYWHERE or sent to anyone.
Later that day, I received a message on FB from some account and this person sent a bunch of these photos to me.
Then said person sent the photos to my daughter’s psycho ex.
What I need to know is:
- Was her computer considered hacked and the hacker stole the photos off of her computer?
- How do we get the hacker OUT of the computer?
- How do we protect the computer now because I don’t understand HOW they got in to begin with if she has an Avast product?
Thank you for your help.
Hello,
I’m not surprised, that Avast support was not helpful, since their job is to help you with using Avast products. Your problem is quite a bit more complicated and solving it correctly requires a lot technical knowledge.
First thing you should do is take the devices in question offline and backup all important data.
Next you should determine, what what was hacked. From your description, there are couple options. Hackers could got the photos either from her computer, her phone or from google/apple account, since Android phones backup all media to cloud storage. I’m not using Apple products, but most likely they behave the same way.
If the photos were obtained from cloud storage, you need to change passwords for google/apple account and enable two-factor authentication.
How to get hacker from phone
- make sure you have backed up all your data
- perform factory reset
- check if your phone is supported by Google/Apple and manufacturer is still releasing security updates for it. If not, throw it away and buy a new one
- make sure phone is updated to the latest version of system software
- reinstall apps and data
Procedure for getting hacker from PC is similar
- make sure you have backed up all your data
- delete everything
- reinstall operating system
- reinstall applications
It might be possible to get malware/hacker out of phone/computer without reinstalling everything, but that would require specific knowledge how the hack was performed. If there are any trustworthy security experts in your area, you can ask them to help you with that.
As for the question how to avoid similar problems in future: Unfortunately, there is no surefire way to protect your accounts and your devices from hacking. With good security practices, you can only significantly reduce chance of such events and their impact. For me, this means
- regularly backup all data
- make sure, that installed software is up to date
- do not download software from untrusted sources
- one of major ways how malware is distributed is through ad services, therefore I’m using adblocker to protect myself from these threats
Disclaimer: Although I do have quite a bit of technical knowledge, I’m not an expert in computer security. I take no responsibility for any damage to your property or data loss.
Hi,
thank you for the detailed and clear response.
As for the support, I was asking them how a hacker could have gotten past Avast. I wanted to know if we had done something wrong with Avast and if we needed something more from Avast on her devices to prevent this from happening again.
She says that she has to accept the backup for her phone to backup to the cloud storage. She says that the photos that were taken were not on the storage cloud. So that would lead me to believe it was either the computer or her phone directly.
She has stated she can’t reset the computer or phone because of what will be lost. We have evidence on them about another matter and for some reason she says it can’t be backed up, she can’t get the apps again or something like that. I am tired of arguing.
So with all those steps, does that mean that Avast protection can’t find the hacker stuff and remove it? IS there anything that could be done with Avast product first to find hacker stuff and remove it?
Thank you
One question, did that person who claims to have the photos actually
show you proof of having those photos?
Hi,
Well, I replied last night but it appears it didn’t post.
Thank you for the question.
The person in question sent me 2 of the photos they took to my FB messenger. They have the photos this is not a bluff. This was not a contact/FB friend of mine. Assuming it is a fake FB account.
They were able to control their FB account so that I could not reply to them. For 24 hours I could see their FB profile which had 3 friends and a couple of posts. After that 24-hour-ish period, the person deleted the photos and messages from FB messenger and now I can’t see the FB account/profile anymore.
The person sent the same message but in Spanish with the same photos to my daughter’s psycho ex. I am not joking. He is psychotic. Now this action of this person is putting us at risk.
As a note before someone says go to the authorities/police… We are in Bolivia, South America… They won’t do anything at all about this.