Source: Photo by Sora Shimazaki: https://www.pexels.com/photo/unrecognizable-hacker-with-smartphone-typing-on-laptop-at-desk-5935791/
Even A Billionaire, Even the world's richest man cannot save himself from being hacked. Yes, I am talking about the Jeff Bezoz phone hacking incident.
My friend whose identity I will keep safe has been in my friend zone for over 2 decades as we used to play Command And Conquer Red Alert 3 online together a long time ago.
My friend contacted me a month ago and he told me two of his social media accounts got hijacked, his Facebook and his YouTube channel. Being an experienced YouTuber myself I went to the form and filled it up for him via the YouTube help and support section under my YouTube analytics and somehow we got his channel back live and safe with all his content up and running.
His Facebook case I emailed Facebook providing his email address a week ago but Facebook never contacted him and his Facebook account is still hacked.
My Friend Found Out That A Hacker Is Demanding Ransom For Not Leaking His Data Online
Today this same friend of mine contacted me and he told me a shocking revelation that he was hacked he said the following things to me which I will segregate in a list below:
- The hacker showed him proof that his Windows 10 was in Russian Language and shared a screenshot of him showing him his Windows 10 settings page.
- The hacker told my friend that it was him in fact that got his Facebook and YouTube accounts hijacked.
- The hacker confirmed that it was he who infected his desktop with a specific malware that my friend the victim accidentally installed on his desktop after clicking on a phishing scheme. The hacker told my friend that this malware was still undetected on his desktop and that he had gotten hold of his entire data for over a month so he went on to track all of his online activities, files, and personal data which he would leak if he did not get a ransom of 800 dollars wired to his cryptocurrency untraceable bitcoin wallet account.
- The hacker specifically threatened my friend not to format his hard drives or call the police (Cyber Security) as no one or no action would be able to save him unless he met his monetary demands on time.
- The hacker told my friend that he had access to his desktop camera, his phone camera, and even a recording microphone so he could take a look at him in real life as well. Just like the government spies on our web cameras and recording devices but this is a notable fact thanks to people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.
- The hacker specifically threatened my friend that if his demands were not met within 48 hours then he would go on to leak his private data online in a video format and also make sure this data was forwarded to his contact list as well.
My Friend Obviously Said No To The Hacker
After the incident my friend contacted me and here is the list of things he did in order to protect his online trace so that the hacker cannot harm him with the data leak.
- My friend Formatted his desktop hard drive completely and installed the Windows 10 operating system fresh. Before doing this activity my friend securely saved all his important data in an external 1 terabyte (TB) USB hard disk.
- My friend contacted his Internet Service Provider (ISP) to change his IP address.
- My friend changed the passwords of all his social media accounts namely Google, Twitter, VK, YouTube, discord app, and also his favorite game which he regularly plays online called League Of Legends account password he changed.
- My friend installed AntiMalware which cost him 10 dollars a month and he scanned the whole of his hard drive hence making sure that no malware was attached to his desktop in any shape or form.
- My friend not only changed all the passwords but also enabled Two-factor authentication via Google Authenticator on his mobile phone for an added layer of security on all of his social media and gaming accounts.
- My friend put plastic tape and a sticky piece of cloth on his mobile phone cameras so that he could feel safe from the hacker and is currently according to him under paranoia.
- My friend consulted the government of Austria Police cyber security unit via online form submission to make sure the hacker cannot do something like this in the future and it remains under their records for his online protection.
- My friend stopped playing his favorite online multiplayer game called League Of Legends and limited his online activity.
- My friend vowed never to click on phishing links ever again no matter how enticing or trustworthy they looked like.
- My friend after changing the passwords of all his social media and other important accounts like the gaming ones made sure that the lengths of the passwords were above 16 digits with upper, and lower cases and also used numbers and special characters in it as well.
- My friend went on to invest in a good quality VPN which cost him about 10 dollars a month so his IP address could be changed often to other countries hence hiding his online trace somewhat.
- My friend added the same AntiMalware and VPN to his mobile device which is Android 11 but before doing this procedure he completely factory reset his Android mobile device.
- My friend also contacted his bank and spent 30 euros to renew his Visa debit card which also gives him not only ATM access but also online internet banking access as well. The bank will assign him a new card number, PIN code, and Internet Banking credentials as well.
Conclusion
The moral of this story is quite simple the internet is not a safe place and let me tell you my own experience. In the last 3 months, three of my social media accounts have been hijacked and only 1 was retrieved successfully.
My Twitter account was hacked in June 2023 and I noticed that there was strange activity happening on it but I did have access to it later I immediately changed it to Two-factor authentication via Google authenticator to resolve the issue however even then Twitter decided to permanently ban my account and after doing countless appeals like over 10+ times it is still banned. Please help me if you have experience with this kind of ban appeal you can contact me via my business email at liquidocelotbusiness@gmail.com.
My Reddit account was hijacked in July 2023 which led the hijacker to get me banned on multiple subreddits please note that my Reddit account has over 14k+ karma and is very important for my online business so when asked in the r/help subreddit they told me to add two-factor authentication via google application through mobile so I did exactly that luckily for me my Reddit account is safe and I can easily access it.
My Hive.blog account which is a social media blogging platform powered by the hive cryptocurrency is one of the most secure platforms on the internet because it provides you a very long password that you cannot change but the hijacker I think somehow hacked into my chrome browser and my google account and somehow got hold of my master password key and requested a password changed and then got 100 percent control of that account of mine stealing away all of my valuable money. My hive.blog account is ecency.com/@liquidocelot and sadly after contacting the ecency discord team the owner of ecency called good-karma told me that my account is lost forever now. The funny thing is the hijacker named sepa666 still has hold of my account and is still taking away money from his account even after asking the ecency team to stop this from happening at least no action was taken on this.
My friend and I after doing some research also saw a similar thread posted on Microsoft Answers and the Microsoft support team told the victim that this might be a lazy attempt to scare him into giving the hacker money so never ever give him a cent even and just do a fresh Windows 10 Installation via Media creation tool into a bootable installer and to back up his data into a USB external hard drive and these steps were taken by my friend as well so maybe not panicking is a great way if you find your self in a similar situation.
My final message to you all is do not and I mean do not click on phishing links whatsoever no matter how trustworthy they look or how much reputation they hold please be very vigilant online and in the end am going to share a video tutorial on this exact topic.
This article was originally published on medium which is legally my content.
Special thanks to 