At approximately 5 PM yesterday, my younger brother went on my computer and wrecked havoc on various message boards I go on to. I don’t have very tight security measures on my computer, because I’m the only one that is on the computer (and my sibling lives 200 miles away). The incident happened when he was visiting for Easter Vacation, and I recently just returned from Sunnyvale where I was visiting relatives.
My password had been saved and so he took it to himself to go willy-nilly on SDMB. He had seen the message boards before, and had read many of my (previous) posts back where he lived. He didn’t want to post because he was paranoid the other dopers would find out who he was :rolleyes:
Obviously this story is hard to swallow, so I posted here hoping someone could offer advice on how to salvage things
First, make sure you are not set to automatically log in, but must manually log in each time you visit. Then make sure you log off after each session. This will keep others from using your account unless they have your password.
Be sure to change your password to something he can’t figure out.
Once you have protected your account from future violations, then I would suggest you offer apologies where necessary in the threads where he commented. This means sincere statements that your account was used by someone other than you, and you apologize for the insults/harsh comments and any hard feelings. You might consider running a search on your name to find all the threads posted to during that timeframe to make sure which comments were not yours.
After that, accept that some people will be very skeptical about your remarks, and may react dubiously. Do not get into pissing contests with anyone over it. Apologize, then try your best to stay out of the conversations that were violated. Move on to other threads, and return to posting. With 880 posts under your belt, if you don’t resume the same behavior you will likely get most people over it fairly quickly.
I would also suggest emailing the admins/mods of ATMB. Explain what happened. Follow their advice.
Alternatively, if you have Windows XP or Windows 2000, lock down your computer so that you can’t use it without having a username and a password to login.