Expert: Lorry - 5/1/2007

Question
Is it possible that someone can hack into your email account can therefore hack into the rest of your online accounts?  Could the attach a hidden attachment to an email that once opened can give them access to all your online accounts?  This is the problem...something happened and all of a sudden, someone began hacking into my ebay (winning thousands of dollars of items), Columbia House (ordered 40 dvd's under my account), and deleted my Myspace and Yahoo accounts.  I called the police Saturday night and filed a report and all they could tell me was to call a credit company, like TransUnion, and have them flagg my credit, which I did.  How do u think all this happened?  Any thoughts?  Any input would be greatly appreciated.  Take care.

Answer
Hi Heather,

The answer to your question is yes. Once a hacker gets the usernames and/or passwords, there could be trouble, more so if you bank online.

You did the right thing by contacting the police, this is identity theft, a serious crime. Regarding the computer, install a firewall program like Zone Alarm, which is free:

http://www.download.com/3000-2092-10039884.html

Check for spyware, I would suggest downloading Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.4, a program that removes spyware, available from:

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,22262,00.asp

Check for updates before running. If you have trouble getting the updates, near the top of the Update Window, click the little arrow next See-Cure  #1(Europe), highlight the next one on the list, See-Cure #2 and try to download the updates. If that doesn't work, try the next one the list. until you get one you can download from. Being a free program, if too many people are using the same site to download the updates, some people will not get them.

Hope this helps!
Lorry