ATS has made me paranoid...or smarter..NOT SURE WHICH

I am sitting at my laptop unwinding after getting home from a 12 hr shift at work by playing Bubble Witch Saga on Facebook (do not judge me), when my screen starts telling to me log in. I am already logged in. What? I ignore it, after all, I am thisclose to beating this level (no I am not a kid I am 44) and logging in right now would require me to forfeit this game. BOO. I get the message again. Then Facebook gives me no option but to log back in. When I put in my password, I am led to a screen I have never been on before that shows me a map with my location (**GASP**) with a star near Chicago IL. Hmmm 250 miles away. Interesting. The message says something to the effect of " blah blah blah someone attempted to log in to your account from IP address (insert numbers and periods here that I am sure mean something to everyone BUT me) from Harvy IL at 738pm. Then it asked if I was logging in from there. I answered no. Then it sent me to another screen and told me to immediately change my password and I did.

Then it happened. I started thinking. (By the way... this is where it gets a little confusing for me)

So then, being an ATS member for a year or so, the possible scenarios started running through my head.

1) WHY on earth would anyone hack me? I am the most boring person on the planet. You would do me a favor if you got in my bank account you certainly couldnt hurt it. But wait...there is ALL kinds of stuff on my laptop. WORK stuff mainly. YIKES. I could be subjecting the company I work for to corporate spying . Nawww...who cares about Medicare. WAIT...it is open enrollment and Obamacare is on the horizon...EVERYONE cares. Crap. Should I alert corporate cyber security? I decide not to in fear of looking stupid.

2) WHOA what if the hacker and not FB just had me change my password and I, like an idot gave it to the hacker? (Thanks ATS) (Who can now just steal my family budget, menus, and family calendar. ) The hacker will now know where we are when and what we are having for dinner and what bills are due when.

3) HOLY MOLY what did I just do. I should have freaking taken my laptop out to the backyard along with my wireless router and filled em full of lead. (Again thanks ATS)

4) WHOA what if it was really Facebook trying to protect me. NAH...well...maybe. That is insane. Or is it? Holy crapola...what if Facebook wasnt the mysterious entity that alerted me to change my password..and the hacker was doing some sort of keystroke spying (read that here on ATS thanks! ).

5) Maybe my teenager was playing a trick on me. Then I instantly remembered she had my car and left 4 hours ago...she could almost be in HARVEY IL and oh crap what if she was kidnapped or something and this is her way of alerting me??????? I mean after all, between Twitter and Facebook her cell phone would have to be pried from her little fingers in ANY situation. Then I remembered the recent Jessica Ridgeway threads and got sick to my stomach. I called my daughter who was extremely annoyed but fine...and she muttered I was freaking out and I needed to "chill" and she promptly hung up on me. THen I realized she could've just posted on my facebook wall or sent a text she wouldn't have to go to those extremes if she had her phone. (NO I am not making fun of Jessica Ridgeway...I really did get sick to my stomach thinking something like that could happen to my girl)

6) What if it was the TPTB? (ATS thank you) I mean, I am a staunch supporter of the right to bear arms, and arent they rounding people like me up to put in secret bunkers?

SO you see my dilemma. A year ago I would have never thought anything else of it changed my password and resumed my boring life. NOT NOW. NOW I am seriously contemplating researching what could end up being my graduate school thesis on Cyber Security. (And I am not even in college!!!)



Can anyone else relate?

My point is ATS has me so aware of the wrong in this world that something as innocent (or not) as someone hacking my facebook account sent my head in a hundred directions in a matter of seconds.

I like to think my eyes have been opened.

It's Facebook trying to protect you. It doesn't necessarily mean someone hacked you, IP locations can be quite far off your actual location. Just make sure your password is strong and I wouldn't worry about it.

You can answer this at #1.
Nope, they were not targeting you in particular, they are targeting people who play facebook games because it is easy to fool people with pop-ups.

I have had nothing but problems with facebook games (my wife and kids both play them) and windows getting trojans/viruses that I ended up switching her laptop over to linux.

Now I don't have to worry about it.

reply to post by SpearMint

.

Thank you for the reassurance. But, again, how does Facebook know where I normally log in from and that wasnt my IP address and I wasnt borrowing a friend's phone to log in? Or that I wasnt on vacation? Or travelling for work? (I am taking notes for that thesis on cyber security starting now..)

Why would anyone really want to hack a boring person like myself? My facebook page is merely a tool to stay in touch with distant friends and relatives. Trust me it is a real yawner. Lots of great pics of my dog CLyde though!

It all makes absolutely no sense to me.

reply to post by OccamAssassin


At the risk of sounding entirely stupid, what is LInux?

lol it's not like hacking a Facebook account will give you much more than a simple friend request can acheive anyway.

Facebook knows your normal location probably because it knows where you log in from most of the time. If that location changes to some where considerably far away it will know something is up. PayPal has a similar, but more advanced system.

reply to post by k21968


Linux is an operating system (like windows).

If you want to give it a go, I would recommend using Mint.

www.linuxmint.com...

Note; You can try it without touching your windows/mac system. The install boots a live version of the OS so you can try it out before installing it on your system.

Originally posted by OccamAssassin
reply to post by k21968

 

Linux is an operating system (like windows).

If you want to give it a go, I would recommend using Mint.

www.linuxmint.com...

Note; You can try it without touching your windows/mac system. The install boots a live version of the OS so you can try it out before installing it on your system.

What are you talking about. Linux is a hackers OS. Educate yourself.

8. Is your son obsessed with "Lunix"?

BSD, Lunix, Debian and Mandrake are all versions of an illegal hacker operation system, invented by a Soviet computer hacker named Linyos Torovoltos, before the Russians lost the Cold War. It is based on a program called "xenix", which was written by Microsoft for the US government. These programs are used by hackers to break into other people's computer systems to steal credit card numbers. They may also be used to break into people's stereos to steal their music, using the "mp3" program. Torovoltos is a notorious hacker, responsible for writing many hacker programs, such as "telnet", which is used by hackers to connect to machines on the internet without using a telephone.

Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


Educate myself?

For starters, LINUX was spearheaded by LINUS TORVALDS a Finnish student who wanted a Unix like operating system built under Richard Stallman's GPL. The source code was released in full to allow anyone in the world with sufficient skills to be able to contribute to the code and allow it to evolve.


en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by OccamAssassin


Laughing smiley means sarcasm friend...

reply to post by OccamAssassin


And this my friends is my point. You all challenge me to think and make informed decisions. I will look at Linux and research it like it is my job and get back to you all

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


You got me.

Originally posted by k21968
reply to post by SpearMint

 

.

Thank you for the reassurance. But, again, how does Facebook know where I normally log in from and that wasnt my IP address and I wasnt borrowing a friend's phone to log in? Or that I wasnt on vacation? Or travelling for work? (I am taking notes for that thesis on cyber security starting now..)

Why would anyone really want to hack a boring person like myself? My facebook page is merely a tool to stay in touch with distant friends and relatives. Trust me it is a real yawner. Lots of great pics of my dog CLyde though!

It all makes absolutely no sense to me.

It just does..it knows if you're on your computer or on a mobile device. I know this because when I got a new phone and logged in..guess what popped up when I signed in on my computer? The same warning you got.Execpt I knew that I really did it. Now that I think about it..about a year ago or so my daughter was playing games on my FB and I got a notification stating that someone was trying to log in from somewhere in Texas. I am in Florida.Obviously,it knew it was not me and blocked the attempt.So long as you changed your password you're fine.

reply to post by k21968


Facebook plugins on websites all over the internet. If you happen to go to a webpage with comments or something that says "Login with facebook" and you post a comment or otherwise interact with it, and allow it to interact with your facebook account, it can appear as if that IP and location was trying to log into your account. Usually successfully, so maybe you didn't allow access properly, or gave the wrong login, and it's tried and failed, and you didn't think about it because you didn't really want to log into this other website in the first place.

maybe?

Originally posted by k21968
reply to post by SpearMint

 

.

Thank you for the reassurance. But, again, how does Facebook know where I normally log in from and that wasnt my IP address and I wasnt borrowing a friend's phone to log in? Or that I wasnt on vacation? Or travelling for work? (I am taking notes for that thesis on cyber security starting now..)

Why would anyone really want to hack a boring person like myself? My facebook page is merely a tool to stay in touch with distant friends and relatives. Trust me it is a real yawner. Lots of great pics of my dog CLyde though!

It all makes absolutely no sense to me.

You can get a rough location from whatever IP you use. They know what IP you log in from and the location, so they know when it changes.

Originally posted by k21968
reply to post by OccamAssassin

 

And this my friends is my point. You all challenge me to think and make informed decisions. I will look at Linux and research it like it is my job and get back to you all

You really don't need to do that, just make sure you have a decent AV program with it's virus definitions up to date. I doubt it was anything to do with viruses anyway, it probably wasn't anything to do with hackers, it just happens sometimes.