SOMEONE HACKED INTO MY EMAIL ACCOUNT ~ help

Actually, i did look into that and yes it is against the law to open and read someone's email by way of stealing password information etc... (by canadian law anyway) ** i do have her IP address from a few of her emails that she sent and she is a sympatico member just like me and Sympatico doensn't act kindly to people stealing or abusing other people's emails and private computers using there server for their own personal gain. No one else other than me uses my computer and so whatever or whomever (and i know who) logged on from their own PC or somebody else's ~ none the less the "big guys" are working on it and we will track it down.... my case is different in the sense that i already have a very large harassment file on this person and this internet identity theft would only enhance my case.... the police told me that most of the time its very hard to prove and alot of red tape to go through to get the answers, so most of the time nothing happens, unless its a big popular case and you got tons of money to back you.... in my situation, she is very much known to the authorities as harassing me and threatning me ~ so this would be the icing on the cake. I also made hard copies of the emails she deleted as well as saved them on other private email sites that she doesn't know about ~ i'm 2 steps ahead of her and smarter! For now, i've secured my PC the best way i know how and will sit back and wait for the confirmations to come in from MSN and Sympatico... take care & good luck

 

prguru,

Glad you are making progress on your case. You might want to also back up your evidence by downloading the emails and putting it on a floppy or CD. Put the CD or floppy somewhere safe. You should also make paper printouts of the emails and also store them safely.

Did MSN say they will be able to restore the deleted emails from a backup?
(They should recover the backed up emails in case they recycle the backup media)

From what I learned, you should expect her to try to hack into your account again, even if you take the password / secret question advice given earlier, it appears that it is relatively simple for her to access your account again.
Get a different email provider asap if you don't want to be spied on. Keep the Hotmail account so they can recover the data, but she may be able to access it again.
Fastmail has been recommended here before and there are many others.


GoneTil9,

If you can get her ip address, then you can track down the isp and perhaps get her ISP account terminated for violation of Terms Of Service. Otherwise, unless there is substantial proven financial damage, don't expect too much from the legal system.
In the US even ID Theft with proven financial damage, the laws are weak and do not protect victims effectively.

 

hi Devinco,

I have her IP address at work... she e-mailed me from there, and she actually admitted in that e-mail that she hacked my account!! Pretty stupid on her part. She did all of this from work, so I guess what I would need to do is call HR at her company. And part of me wants to do that soooo badly. However, this is made a lot more complicated because she is my "almost" sister-in-law and anything that happens to her will directly affect her husband.... who is my boyfriend's twin brother. I'm stuck because I am genuinely a little worried that she may have some of my personal information on her computer at work, but if I do something about it, it will create a mess. I'm so confused. Thanks very much for your reply.

 

GoneTil9,

Backup all your emails, save them locally on your computer. Back them up on either a CD or floppies as well. Create a separate evidence backup CD containing any emails that you would want to use in the future as evidence (especially confessions). Print those out too and store in a safe place.
Even if you don't use the evidence, it could be used as leverage if she continues to harass you. Only do that in the very worst case. It seems like she may have more info on you than you have on her.
So best to go for damage control now.

I don't know about Xanga, it is a blog site visible to all?
They offer webmail?

Webmail (IMAP - Internet Messaging Application Protocol) works a little differently than a POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) email account.
With IMAP, the emails are stored on the mail server, not your local computer, unless they are backed up or archived by your email client.
POP3 email is stored locally on your computer.
This means that after you back up your emails locally on your computer, you could delete all the emails on the server (empty the trash or deleted items folder TOO). I don't mean just read the emails, save them on your computer.
If she did not back up your emails locally on her computer or print them out, then she won't have access to them anymore.
If Xanga email can be accessed by POP email, then she will have the emails on her computer.

For anti-keyloggers, search this forum, there are several good threads here.
If your computer is compromised with malware, then it really doesn't matter where your email account is. If you suspect your own computer has been compromised, you really need to clean it up first.

Read all the emails that she had access to and find out what damaging info has been learned. If other account info, passwords, financial info, etc. is in the emails, you need to go to every account and change the passwords and maybe change your credit card numbers that you used at those stores.

Don't start a war you can't win.
Sometimes no response is the best response.
If the person stoops that low, best not to have anything to do with her anyway.
Don't respond to her harassment. Your response gives her fuel to keep going.
But do accumulate all the evidence, in case things escalate.

Hope it helps

 

Thanks for the advice... I'm already way ahead of most of that.... I've changed all my passwords, etc. My friend owns the website where I have my e-mail, the server is literally in his bedroom (and, obviously, the email is web-based) and I know she doesn't have access to my stuff anymore BUT I wouldn't put it past her to have copied stuff to her work computer, or printed it out. She wouldn't have seen any account numbers or passwords on my e-mail (except Xanga... see below), but who the hell knows what she would have done or saved including just personal e-mails between me and other people.

Xanga is only a blog site where you can make it private, which I did. Nobody in the whole world knew I had that account (that was the purpose) and even though she denies it I know it was her who found that password (that was the one password I accidentally had in e-mail, when they sent it to me, I didn't delete it) and stole my account. Anyways, that information doesn't matter because she already tried to use it against me (all just very personal stuff) and it didn't even work.

I will save important things to disc as well as printing them out. I learned my lesson about that!!