This started about a month or two ago, I’m not sure if it is just coincidence or if it actually spells something out.
In that time I’ve had
[ul]
[li]Someone tried to hack into my SD account by guessing the password and got locked out[/li]
[li]On my hotmail under chrome, when I attempt to open it I get an error message saying ‘your connection is not private, someone may be trying to steal your data’. I don’t get this message with other browsers to open hotmail and never got this on chrome before. [/li]
[li]Just today on my phone I got a warning that someone was trying to access my device and to restart it. I’m not sure if that was real or spyware (sometimes spyware pretends to be anti-virus advice). [/li][/ul]
I know I’ve had a few other questionable things happen in the last month or two, but those are the ones I can recall. Maybe I pissed someone off and they are trying to get revenge or something. Hopefully it is all a coincidence though.
So what are my options? I’ve got a firewall on my laptop and have tape covering the camera. Can I get a firewall for my android phone? What security precautions should I take?
I get a similar one to your chrome warning when I use a public WiFi to do just about anything. Think it has to do with my security settings. I’ve seen your phone one on fake warning ads that want you to buy their spamware.
OS security levels being tripped by normal use
real attempts by individuals to break in
attempts by bots to break in
fake notices by malware posting as AV warnings
overwrought warnings by freeware AV to get you to upgrade
I changed passwords on two e-mail accounts recently, after Google warned me that someone in the Atlanta area supposedly had attempted to get into my gmail account using the existing password.
It pissed me off because I had been using the same arcane password for a long time and liked it. I pity the poor hacker slob who actually gets into my gmail account and has to wade through all the useless crap there.
That’s a good plan… bore all the hackers to death.
Okay, my hard drive is now full of Pregnant Giraffe videos, and kittehs.
Some Nigerian ‘prince’ will get to read fifty-two hundred emails like: “Evolene is having her kittens - 4 so far and all alive. The first was breech, and was possibly dead, but he moved! So emotional!”
Of those, only the first one would really concern me. Well, I’d be concerned that I was not logged into my secure router, but not that someone was hacking me. (I can’t imagine how your phone could detect that someone was using your Wi-Fi.) And, yes, that last one sounds like malvertising, especially if it tried to get you to install their antivirus.
I would not think they actually have your SDMB password, or they would use it. It sounds more like a denial of service attack, where they’re just trying to keep you from being able to log in.
I would probably check my router’s logs just to be sure. It should know the MAC addresses of anyone who has successfully logged in to your Wi-Fi. But I suspect it’d be perfectly fine, and you were just using a public network to log in.
I will say I can’t see how changing passwords on things would hurt.
The OP has to consider if they are important enough to someone to be a directed target. IOW, I blow most of these type events off since across multiple devices I am really not that important to be a target. I don’t do financial data on any device I leave home with. I don’t log in to any websites using any public wifi site. I come here from work on my phone using my data plan. For sites like this one, I have a common general password that is not near the same level of complexity as my email or financial sites. If my fantasy football team gets trashed, so what.
