if you've ever been a victim of an online scam or know someone who has,
you'll want to watch this video
and learn my checklist of what to do after the fact.
My name is Daniel and I make weekly tech-torial videos on this channel.
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Before you become a victim it's easy to simply just know not to call any
phone numbers that pops up on your computer saying to call a specific number.
Especially if they're asking for a ransom in an email saying they have your password
which even looks like a password that you do currently use, or you used to use.
Just change the password. 99.9 percent of the time,
They don't actually have anything on you that they claim they do.
They're just trying to get you to respond
and see how far they can take you into their scam.
Just ignore them and review my other security videos on this channel
to learn how to secure your computer and your online accounts alot better.
So now that you know how to avoid this in the future,
let's get into the checklist of what to do after the fact.
If you accidentally got fooled into letting someone into your
computer to fix a problem, the problem that they installed on your
computer in the first place, then you'll want to do a few things.
Also if you gave them your banking information,
you'll want to do a few more things. So let's start from the top.
Since you don't know for sure, and no technician could know for sure, what,
if anything, the hacker planted on your computer;
To feel more secure, you'll want to format your hard drive and reinstall everything.
As much of a pain in the butt that is,
it's the safest thing to do and it's the only way to guarantee that your
system is clean from any hackers being in your system.
Before doing that you'll want to backup and document everything.
So backing up your data...
there's obvious things such as what's on your Desktop, your Documents, Pictures
Music, Videos. They're all very clearly listed in Windows at least.
If you're on a Mac or Linux, it'll look a
little different but they're still, those are the easy things to look for.
I talk mainly about windows here.
So if you're using the windows Sticky Notes, which are very handy.
They're in a different location,
and they actually changed locations twice since windows 10 came out.
So you're going to want to make sure that you go to that specific location to
back up your sticky notes, if you use them.
Your emails also may be stored in a different location other than your Documents.
Depending on what email program you're using.
They have different locations for where the emails are stored.
If the email is IMAP, it's stored in the Cloud.
So it won't matter, there's nothing to back up there.
But if it's a POP account, it will be stored on your computer and you do need
to back that up or it's going to be lost. If you're not sure what you have you can
go into the settings of your email account and see if it says
POP, IMAP, Windows Exchange or something else. Aside from backing up all
your data, you're going to want to document all the programs that you need
to reinstall; and you can do that easily by
going through the Apps and Features in Windows 10,
or depending if it's Mac or Linux, look through
your programs list where you would go to uninstall programs.
That will give you a nice list, in easy format, to see what you have
currently installed. There'll be a lot of services and things
that come with the computer. So you don't need to document all those things.
If you're not sure what they are, you probably don't use them and you
don't need to worry about it.
The third thing for preparing the computer,
is you want to document your settings.
So the email configuration, you got to know how to set it back up again.
There may be some other details around that in the
configuration and personalization. Speaking of personalization, you might
even want to take a picture of your desktop to see the location
of all the shortcuts on there if you're very picky about where things are, so you
can find things easily again once you get everything reinstalled.
You might even want to document what wallpaper picture you have currently.
If you really want to get it personalized exactly the way it was.
Some other important things would be even the power settings.
Making sure that you have that set up all the same.
There's a lot of settings that you may have personalized over a
period of time that you don't even realize that you're not using the defaults.
So once it's reinstalled, things might
not look or act the same until you go in and re-personalize
everything again. So it's a good time to try and write down
all the personalization settings ahead of time as well.
After the fresh install of your computer,
then you're going to want to change all your passwords; and it's important to do this
after the fresh install, because the hacker could have
installed some kind of tracking software that would know
when you changed your password, what you changed it to,
and for what website. So it's best to document the date of the password change
as well. So that way you'll know when you changed it last,
because you should change it often. Large companies have 30-day
policies or something close around that. I'm not suggesting that you need to
change your passwords that often, but the more often you change it,
the better it is. Especially when you get these ransom
attack emails saying that they have your password and they're showing you what it is.
Meanwhile it's a password that you
haven't used in years, because if especially if you change your
passwords often enough, it's old news; and I've had emails like that.
We all have I believe, and the passwords
that they're saying they have on me, I haven't used that in so long. So it's
clearly a scam as well. But if they do show you a password that you currently use,
then you definitely need to change that.
You need to change the passwords drastically as well.
So if you change it from like password1 to password2 or something like that,
it's too similar and it's easily hacked; and if you happen to have fallen
for the scam long enough to give me your credit card before realizing it was a scam,
you're gonna need to call the bank and
get a new credit card number; also tell the bank what happened and ask
them about reimbursement and what they can do for you.
You may get a refund from the company
that scammed you sometimes directly, or the bank will do a reverse charge on
your credit card. If you store your bank
information on your computer, you'll need to call the bank
and ask about your options. You'll need to immediately change your
online banking password after the computer has been formatted.
You'll want to change your password for all the websites that you have a
login and password saved on your computer for; such as
social media sites, your email and any other online services.
You can also and you should, tighten up your security with 2FA or two-factor authentication.
I've got several videos on this in my
security playlist that you should review. It's not a complete list,
but it gives you some popular sites and enough experience
to hopefully be comfortable in setting up
two-factor authentication for all your online services.
So in summary, you're going to want to back up your data,
document all the settings, then wipe the computer and do a
fresh install of everything. You're going to want to change your
passwords for everything, and change them drastically.
Your bank, email, social media sites, and other online services.
You can talk to the bank about your options with them.
Then finally enable two-factor authentication for all the websites that support it.
That's it for this tech-torial.
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Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one.
Bye for now.