Any ideas on how my daughter's ex keeps hacking her face book account?

Police will deal with it!

He put a keylogger on her PC and every day it is sending him a file with everything she types. It is time for her to secretly get a new PC and only use the old one to mess with his head.

I think @LuckyGuy is probably right. I’m not sure what the legality of such is. You might check with police to see if finding a keylogger and tracing it to him puts him in violation of your state or local laws. The question raises another issue. If there is a keylogger present, your Anti Virus software is either entirely absent, has been deliberately crippled, or is horrendously out of date. Any good AV software should detect and remove a keylogger.

Also, never use personal information as password material. It’s now widely available online and there are hacker programs that can take all known data about you and run permutations and combinations of it till they crack your password. Often, it takes just a few minutes.

A password that’s pure gibberish, like d8YE32kpr((j_e would take billions of years for a cracking program to break. Some sites do not allow special characters in passwords. In that case, just use letters and numbers in a random sequence.

A keylogger program will defeat any password because he can tell that it is entered just after she signs into FB or her email.
Do not mention anything to him about this. Use the knowledge to drive him crazy. Have her write false letters and statements. Say she is going to other places and not show. Use a different password as if you are in FB. Waste his time . You are now in control.

If you cannot afford a 2nd PC then have her change her password while at another computer at another location and only check accounts in the library or on someone else’s pc. Or pay for a key scrambler program. That sometimes defeats keyloggers.

Did he help her set up your router? It is possible he installed a page logger / keylogger there too. Your PC might be compromised as well.

She doesn’t have a PC….she uses an i phone….

Why would my PC be compromised?

@LuckyGuy I realize that a keylogger would compromise any password, no matter how strong. The info about strong passwords was meant for future reference, as keyloggers are not the only way to compromise passwords, and the method of creating a password @Dutchess_III mentioned in the OP is subject to defeat by cracking software as well.

@Dutchess_III If the router is compromised, then anything connecting through it is an open book. Personally, rather than buying another computer and trying to mess with the guy’s head, I’d refer it to law enforcement. In most jurisdictions, installing such programs on someone else’s computer without their permission is a crime.

Iphone?!? That is even easier. Here is the program. You can get it for free and try it for 90 days
http://download.cnet.com/iKeyMonitor/3000-2144_4-75691441.html

Here is their product description:
” From Employee Monitoring:
iKeyMonitor is an iOS Keylogger for iPad, iPhone, iPodTouch and any other iOS devices that logs keystrokes, websites, screenshots and automatically sends the logs to you by email or FTP. iKeyMonitor aims to monitor and track the user activities taken place on target Apple devices. The main logging features of iKeyMonitor include tracking websites, printing screen and recording keystrokes. iKeyMonitor offers a rightful choice for Apple users to monitor and supervise the iPad/iPhone/iPodTouch usage of children, partners or employees. iKeyMonitor reveals activities on the iOS devices and provides parents with clear visual history via Email.”

This is just a sample piece. There are lots of other software packages available for iPhone “useders”.

My guess is that he was alone with her phone for 10 minutes when she was taking a shower.

@LuckyGuy Good grief! That is terrible.

How do we prove that it was him?
Also, can we uninstall it?
How would I find it if it was on my PC?

this is some scary shit you guys.

You betcha’
A few years ago millions of electronic picture frames were sold to consumers at Target and Watmart store for $15–20 – just in time for Christmas! They were made in china (of course) and came preloaded with 4 different pieces of spyware including a keylogger that automatically downloaded on the victim’s pc when they installed the necessary software. China said this was not state sponsored and that an employee must have done it. Yeah right.
How many of those are still out there? Ugh!

Sorry to scare you Dutchess_III . But you did ask.
I am not an iPhone guy. I don’t trust them You will have to do some searches to see how to find it and eliminate it. You might not be able to. They are often password protected.

So the only way is to get her another phone….?

What would the Walmart and Target picture frames do?

So how would we prove it was him?

@Dutchess_III Logger programs must either have a place to send their findings or be accessed remotely by the hacker. In either case, when they hook up to find out what happened that day, they are busted.

I don’t know where to start. Will the police be familiar with what to do? Or would her carrier?

People can download their pictures onto the electronic picture frames and it changed the picture all day long like a screensaver on a pc. At $20 it was a nice personalized gift to get for the grandparents in Florida. Parents loaded pictures of the family and sent them off to Florida. Meanwhile their computers at home were compromised. The US did nothing. F***ing wimps. WalMart offered to give you your money back. I heard that less than 3% of the suckers customers did so. I try to avoid anything made in china.

It might not be a crime in your jurisdiction. Call the police and ask. Don’t expect help from the carrier. They will say it is your problem. It is not their responsibility. They will say you need to maintain control of your phone.

If he is clever it will be impossible to prove it is him. He will use a throw away email account and will access it from a public spot to throw off any IP address sniffers. I figure it is a waste of time . Drive that low life crazy. In the meantime let your daughter know not to tip her hand.

I have two of those picture frames. I meant, what did the employee have to gain from doing that?

Arrrrgh!... There you go…. It is highly unlikely it was an employee.

I just did a quick search. Here is an article about it. Virus from China, The gift that keeps on giving.
There are many other articles

I see. Well, China sucks! They’re in on all my conversations with Obama, aren’t they!

They are now. They also know about this conversation.
But now you know they know so you can play!

Called the police. They had no idea, had never heard of such a thing.

Called the carrier. They patched me through to their techs. Techs advised resetting the phone to factory settings. Hopefully that will delete any program that may have been downloaded. No guarantees, but worth a try.

Oh they know exactly what it is. With a court order they’ll load one on your phone faster than you can say “invasion of privacy” They just don’t want to be bothered.

She needs to keep the phone in her sight and password it in case he has access. Tell her to change the password on another computer in another location.
I would not trust the factory reset 100% to do the job. Does she have files stored on it? If she gets an email from him don’t ever open it. Does he know her online fiile storage password? Probably. Change everything from a different computer.
Now that she is somewhat educated it is up to her to protect herself.

She should leave some honeypot info around to see if he bites. (Look it up.)

I’ve been thinking about a sting! Trying to come up with a good one. She doesn’t get emails, just text.

Also, be aware that it is easy to get password information if you know a lot about someone. For example, if I know the answers to your secret questions, then I can often change your password or get access to your account. That is why using fake answers is recommended.

Pretty sure there was no way he could know what her password was. It was very long and very complicated.

She just told me that apparently he has access to her text messages too.

Sounds like what I said above. He is stupid and careless. A pro would never let her know.
She can play him.

Who bought and paid for the phone? Whose name is on the account?
If he bought the phone and gave it to her as a gift she’s been had.

Get her a new phone from a different carrier and have her change every password she can – while sitting in the library. If she ever made a purchase with her phone he likely has her banking password too.

No, he didn’t. But I’m sure he’s had access to it in the past.

Actually, although so much of @LuckyGuy‘s advice is spot on, since neither you nor your daughter understands this stuff very well, I would not recommend the parts about his responses to “play with the guy.” That would let him know that you know about his activity. Better he should think that she has quit Facebook (which I would also not necessarily recommend) than to let him know now that “she knows”. That would alert him that he has to improve his methods, and make him smarter, drive him underground, and let him know that he can no longer tip his hand. Since he’s already ahead of you in this game, that would cause him to up his game so that he would stay ahead. I think if he reconsiders his advice, even @LuckyGuy might agree with this: You aren’t ready to play his game yet in a way that @LuckyGuy would be.

Better for him to think that your daughter has just given up on social networking.

In the meantime, as both @LuckyGuy and @ETpro have suggested, you need to use passwords that are much more (apparently) randomized and secure. Longer. More special characters. Mix in numerals, capital letters, punctuation marks (if the system allows that). They don’t have to be entirely random, but number-for-letter substitutions can help you with mnemonics, such as
YuZel0tz0f$pec1a11charz

It’s not hard to remember “use lots of special chars”, is it? Then just remember how to write it differently, in this way. She can remember that, surely (or something like it) and let the numerals and special characters make the password more complex. And change passwords from time to time. Don’t use the same ones over and over. Don’t type them onto screens where anyone might be able to “shoulder surf” and pick up the keystrokes.

Another thing that you’ll have to do, as well as her, of course, is be very leery of social engineering. He doesn’t have to know all of her habits and all of her messages… if he has someone else pass those on to him, say, someone who still trusts him and thinks that he and your daughter should still be a couple, for example. So your daughter has to be aware of who her friends really are, and not be so open with all of them all of the time. In addition, be careful of who is admitted to “friend” status on Facebook and other networks. It’s easy, when we’ve lived open lives with good friends for a long time, to accept every friend-of-a-friend request when we don’t know the person at first hand – or we think that the person who is sending us a request is really who we think it is.

You guys need to think about security now in ways that you never did before.

@Dutchess_III If illegal electronic surveilance doesn’t interest your local police, maybe insidious stalking would. Your daughter has a stalker. A controlling, potentially dangerous stalker. He prefers electronic stalking for now, but the psychological discomfort, the feeling of violation is the same. You start the conversation with the police with the statement that you KNOW your daughter is being stalked. That should get their attention. This sonovabitch needs to be taught a lesson.

@Espiritus_Corvus The woman I talked to at the police department did mention that she should get a stalking order against him, but when I asked her how we could prove that he’s the one doing it she just said she didn’t know.

@CWOTUS as it stands now, until we can get this fixed, it doesn’t matter how complicated a password is. It just gets handed to him, apparently.

When she gets the time I’ll have her read off of this.

Keep in mind that he may already have read it, too. There’s no certainty that your own passwords aren’t known to him.

@Dutchess_III I would follow closely again @LuckyGuy‘s description of howw this is done. Re-read what he’s described here, understand how this is done, be able to describe it in basic terms to the police. Maybe print this thread out for reference. You’ve detected this stalker by a deductive process—the special knowledge that he would only know if he had access to your daughter’s communications.

”...yesterday he was on the phone to her and started quoting things she’d sent via PERSONAL messaging. Another time he picked a fight with her because she had PM’d a guy she used to date.”

If this rings true, then I think you should roll with it.

@CWOTUS Good. Hopefully he realizes the world of shit he is about to bring down upon himself. Nothing like a felony of this type to keep someone washing dishes for the rest of their lives.

In the grand scheme of things, a password like “YuZel0tz0f$pec1a11charz” has a pretty high easy-to-crack vs. hard-to-remember ratio. You’d be much better off using three random words, like “wormcarelevator” or something. It’s simply not guessable, and your daughter is far more likely not to have to store it somewhere (where it can be found by a third party) to remember it.

@CWOTUS Actually I said she should not change or say anything. Let him think his software is working. When I said play with him I meant she should continue to write messages and PMs but many of them should be false. Say things about a party or place she is going but not really go. Let him be a stalker but never find her. Say some things about him that would drive him crazy.

In the meantime get ready to get new hardware (most likely a new phone) and change all passwords while in another location and on a different computer.

He knows the tech better than she does so she cannot compete in that arena . Now that she knows what is going on she can let his jealously drive him crazy. PM a pretend boyfriend and let him know that Snooper’s p**** was a joke and his personality was even smaller. That was why she dumped him.
——————————-
Password strength is not the issue. The guy is not the NSA. He is not spending time to hack her password. He is getting it automatically by the keylogger program. It does not matter if it is 4 numbers or 40 alphanumeric characters.. Most likely the problem is that he had access to her phone and took advantage of the opportunity. .

@Espiritus is right this is stalking and should be filed with your local pd for sure. like yesterday.

I would contact the police again. Put it in writing perhaps. Then there is a trail showing you tried to access their assistance. Cyber stalking is a crime as far as I’m aware.

Problem is, how do we PROVE it? We don’t have thousands for an attorney.

@Dutchess_III, doesn’t she have messages for him discussing her personal messages on Facebook that he should not have access to? Would those messages constitute some kind of proof that he is in her account?

Can she record her calls with him to show he has information about private conversations on Facebook or through email? There are apps you can download. She need to check on the legality of recording calls in your state. Often she needs to let him know the call’s being recorded or she can record but not use the recording for evidence or share it with anyone else. So just check. I’d probably try to make him communicate via email.

From what I understand, it’s been verbal accusations.

Just the fact that he has obtained this special knowledge constitutes probably cause, which gives the cops the reason to search his hard drives, phone, electronics for evidence. If he has left a keylogger in any of your stuff, or an FTP to relay the info, for instance, there will be a corresponding program in his stuff, a trace of incriminating data, something. Hard drives and memories are very difficult to completely cleanse and then there are the servers… not my field at all, but I do believe you can establish probable cause to allow the cops to do their job.

You can plant misinformation that can only be obtained by monitoring your daughter’s communications, info that he will react to either by showing up to interrupt an imaginary tryst, or info that he will call and harrass your daughter over and be recorded, documented in some way. All you need is a credible witness, maybe a cop? or a cell phone with video to catch it. That is how spies are caught. They are caught acting on unique bits of misinformation.

Cops won’t do shit. Restore the phone in iTunes and then change your passwords. Really, cops don’t care about you not being able to secure your computer/phone unless you work on making nukes.

The police will consider this a domestic dispute and put it on the back burner with all the others they get every day. They will get involved only after there is violence or the threat of violence. You might get an order of protection and have him violate it.
All this will take time and money.

Give it a try. Pursue it and protect your daughter. What the hell do we know what the cops in one town in America, of all the towns in America, are going to do on this given day? You guys are smart, but you’re not psychic.

Another vote for key logger. It will likely be a bit of software that can be uninstalled, or if the hacker is very smart, it is a physical hardware key logger fitted in to the keyboard.

If it is not this, then he is just really good at guessing your daughters secret questions, or your daughter is very bad at creating secret questions. If he hacks her email by guessing who her 3rd grade teacher was or whatever the secret question is, he can then do a “forgot password” for facebook.

If it is that method, then he also probably has inside help, someone your daughter trusts and gives info to, such as her new email address, is passing it on to her.

99% chance it is a key logger though.

Insist the police do their job.

Here in Spain, you would get 5 years in prison and a 45.000 euro fine, just for logging in to someones email, it is against their constitutional right to correspondence.

If the police are giving you excuses, push them harder, there are probably several different crimes being committed here. Depending on laws in your area.

Thanks you guys. The police didn’t seem the least bit interested when I talked to them yesterday.

She’s going to take it in to the local carrier office here today and get it purged and re-programmed. We’ll see what comes of that.

Since he is reading her info I would type that “whomever’ was tapping into your email just got
found out”! and that they are on the way now!”
IF the Ex reads this text, he will react.

Well, the service provider told my daughter that even if they reset the phone to factory settings and changed her number, all her ex would have to do is reset his email to continue to receive the messages from the new number….?

Freaking iPhone. I hope you both have not tipped you hand by saying anything.
He is not on the account is he?

No, @LuckyGuy. Her carrier just told her that there is a program he can download on HIS phone that allows him to get her messages because his phone is an Android….

@LuckyGuy Is there not a way to find and remove the offending app?

@Dutchess_III That doesn’t sound right… they seem to be saying that anyone could hack anyone else’s phone remotely. He must need to have some way to access her phone via passwords.

That’s what they told her. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.

I don’t believe it…. unless he has her password or account info. She needs to change it. I would argue that her phone still has the software mentioned above installed and the iPhone folks, while friendly and sympathetic, do not know how or are unwilling to remove it. That is not their job.
Is it time for another phone? Maybe.
In the meantime do not tip your hand. Drive him crazy – one falsehood at a time.

Look at this

OMG. I was at that website and asked, via chat, how to uninstall such a program. The answer was “Hello
We kindly inform you that we do not provide such kind of services as for detecting spy software on the cell phones. The information about our software is sensitive and can be disclosed to our existing customers only.”

@Espiritus_Corvus They’re saying that resetting to factory settings should uninstall it.

Thanks @Dutchess_III This has to be the most depressing ad ever:

“Are your employees out of control? Business phone bills high or do you even suspect your staff of talking behind your back? Or how about your children?

“Do you always know what they are up to or who they are with? With the right Android spyware it will be impossible to hide the truth from you.”

In-fucking-credible. And there are enough sick fucks out there to make a million on this.

I asked him if it was illegal. Response: “We are a US based company with clients worldwide and therefore cannot give legal advice. Please read our Terms and Conditions and seek legal counsel if you have questions regarding the operation of our software.
It is a considered federal and/or state violation of the law in most cases to install surveillance software onto a mobile phone or other device for which you do not have proper authorization, and in most cases you are required to notify users of the device that they are being monitored. Failure to do so is considered to be your own responsibility and is made at your own risk.”

That last one to me would be to @LuckyGuy, he’s the one who’s familiar with this shit. I’m still in shock.

I still say to follow LuckyGuy’s advice, but stay on the cop’s six. Or contact a women’s shelter, or organization in your area who deal with abused women. They know the law and they probably know the right cops to talk to. I’m telling you, don’t stand for this little arrogant smart ass harassing your kid. He needs to be taken down hard. He’s young and he’s a stalker and he has a whole carreer ahead him making women’s lives increasingly miserable.

Me too.

You (click to change)
Well resetting the phone to factory settings uninstall it?
Piter
yes sir
unfortunately
You (click to change)
Unfortunately what?

Piter Unfortunately resetting the phone to factory settings uninstall it
You (click to change) But that isn’t unfortunate for us. Also, is there an app he (the spy) can download to HIS phone that would allow him to get information from HER phone?

Piter
we do not have such informatuon
you can check it onlinbe
online

@Espiritus_Corvus They’re not young. My daughter is 27, he’s 30.

@Dutchess_III But it sounds like mSpy needs to be installed on the person’s phone. I don’t think it is at all possible to hack someone’s phone without either (a) having physical access to it or (b) tricking the user into installing spyware, via something sent in an email or something.

Also, your daughter doesn’t have an Android device, she has an iPhone. Though, I suppose similar apps exist for Apple.

OMG: “Cell Phone Spy 1.7.4 opens with a compact looking interface with the chief options placed at the bottom and main functions placed as a list that include modifying settings, uninstalling, hiding and recording the calls and messages exchanged. This is an undetectable program that helps in recording and saving all activities done on the phone that includes GPS positions and even records every SMS and logs every call made with the phone numbers and the duration of the call; all these details are uploaded to an online account and works in complete stealth mode. The user simply needs to log onto the private Mobile Spy account using the internet connection and view the data. This account can be checked from any computer system having an internet connection and includes search tabs to locate conversations by phone number.”

From this source.

Yes, I’m pretty sure he downloaded it onto her phone. I’m feeling more hopeful about resetting to factory settings though….

@Dutchess_III Beside the point. Young to me, anyway. Contact your local org that handles abused women, a CASA shelter or something. They’e in the yellow pages. They know the law and they might know the right cops to talk to.

“Cell Phone Spy is compatible with Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian OS, BlackBerry, Apple iPad, Apple iPhone based smartphones.”

wow.

No shit.

Yeah. Need to reset to factory settings, then send a text that he’ll react to if he sees it.

Get rid of the phone.
Or even better….give it to someone else.

She can’t afford to buy a new phone.

@Dutchess_III
But can she afford all this drama to continue?
Havve her sell it and purchase her own.

She doesn’t have the MONEY @Inspired_2write.

Guys….get this. My daughter reset her phone back to factory settings day before yesterday. Today her ex called and said that yesterday his phone, out of the blue, just shut down, then came back up and it had been reset to factory settings! My daughter asked if I had done that. (She thinks I can do miracles because I worked in the industry for so long!) I said, “No, of course not. I’m pretty sure I’d have to have physical access to his phone. If I COULD do it via the computer, which I don’t know if I could, I’d have to have access to his account. So, no. I didn’t do it.” :)

Can you ‘splain that?

@Dutchess_III Well, it sounds like he somehow syched both their iPhones… looks like he lost all his settings when she reset her phone. Sounds like poetic justice to me. :)

Great news! Don’t let him near her phone. He will try. Believe me, he will try.
She should pretend she does not know why he wants to visit. She should always keep the phone within her direct control. Maybe even password it!

Synched! Oh, I LOVE it @glacial. SO AWESOME! Needless to say, we were gleeful, whatever the reason was!

I’ll let her know @LuckyGuy.

BTW…I have an appt with an attorney on Monday to discuss this issue. From the initial consultation, this could prove very interesting for this little town..a first ever kind of thing… and for that reason..the novelty, he’s keeping his rates low! Maybe even contingency, although I doubt that. But we’ll see. :)

Outstanding. Poetic justice indeed. Dude deserves a good deal worse than that, but truthfully, you have to feel sorry for a guy who is so emotionally immature that he’d react in this manner to a breakup.

Well, if he indeed had it synced, he was stupid to let her know his phone reset itself…..the attorney will be very interested indeed. :)

Sadly, you destroyed the evidence. How will you prove he did it? The data is gone.

We still have circumstantial. :)

That and $2.00 will get you a cup of coffee. Good luck.

@Dutchess_III
Glad that things worked out Ok.
Too bad She counld not have kept tabs on him ?
Good luck,I am happy for you!

Well, @Inspired_2write. He is the father of the twins she had in January. Again, how old are you?

@Dutchess_III personal attack? What does MY age have to do with anything?

@Dutchess_III Tell me she does not have online synching like iCloud or iTunes. She should not put her passwords in a file and store them where he can get them. If she can’t remember write them on a piece of paper and hide it.
I predict he will visit the kids today. Hide the phone. (He will call it.)

Oooo! Does she use Firefox? Does she store her passwords (knowingly or not) on the home PC?

Look at Tools —> Options —>Security and see if the box “Remember passwords for sites” is checked. Uncheck it. .
Then click the button “Saved Passwords” and see if her FB password or anything else valuable is there. Since he is going to the house regularly it would only take him a second to check this out.

She doesn’t have a home PC @LuckyGuy.

I only ask your age @inspired2write because you seem awfully idealistic and simplistic about how the world works. If you are 14 or 15, or whatever, that would explain it.