More tips to protect yourself on MSN Messenger...
I posted an interesting post on “some tips to protect yourself on MSN Messenger”. I was asked couple of questions from one of my blog reader – I thought of making it a post so other readers can learn something from it.
1) How will I know if my MSN's been hacked?
2) How do I rectify it once I find this out - do I have to reinstall MSN?Thanks.
MSN hacking has two scenarios:
1) MSN ID hack
2) MSN messenger hack
1) If your MSN ID is hacked it is more likely you will not be able to sign in to your msn messenger or in passive hack you might see your unread emails are marked as read. (Passive Hack in MSN hack means person doesn't change your password but does change Secret Question so that if you change your password hacker can changes your password and make it active hack! Confused? Let me explain - In Passive Hack - hacker just captures the password and logs into an account to read email. His/Her intention is just to monitor and read your emails. In case you notice that someone is reading your emails and you change your password. Hacker then change your password because he has already changed your secret question)
Passive Hack is very hard to detect until we see any malicious activity. The best practice in this regard is changing password and secret question frequently or periodically.
2) If your MSN messenger is hacked - it is more likely your whole computer security is compromised. Your computer might have become victim of virus/malware or trojan depends on the nature of the hack. In this case you will notice your contacts in msn messenger will complain that you are sending spam emails or your sending them messages asking them to click on different links or maybe asking them to download something interesting. Secondly, you will also notice your msn will perform slowly due to memory low and your overall computer performance is being affected.
In this case, msn messenger re-install will not fix the problem. You need to make sure your computer has up to date antivirus software installed. If not then you will need to install anti-virus, clean your machine which should fix your msn messenger too. In many cases, if your computer doesn't have anti-virus installed, it is more likely virus/trojan/malware installed on your computer will not let you to install it after your computer's security is compromise. In that case, you might need to re-install your operating system or consult computer expert.