Life After Being Hacked

 

Of all the bad things you want to avoid happening to you, being hacked is definitely one of them. And no one can question why people hate what hackers do. It is like having someone trespassing on your property and having no idea that  it is happening. Terrible, isn’t? Imagine yourself opening an email someone has sent you being so excited to receive it. Maybe it is something you thought you have been waiting to receive.

But then as you open the email, something shocking happens—Windows is starting to close, the software is deleting itself, and the email just went off the screen. It could be worse though. In some cases, they even hack your bank accounts.

When things become just like that mentioned here, you can still do something about it. Perhaps, you can start by making sure that your files will not be destroyed in the middle of the hacking, and that your computer will not be a liaison of hacking that can destroy other computers as well—which do happen, sad to say.

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Here are some steps that you can take as a response when your computer has been hacked.

Step #1: Try disconnecting your computer from everything. Make sure it has no life line with anything, most especially with Internet connection.

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By doing so, you are cutting the string that connects your computer with the hacker. Never trust the pop ups or any message saying that everything is already off because some hackers know how to fool people through software. Do it yourself! Make sure you shut everything off with your own hands, even the wires themselves.

Step #2: No matter how important the thing you are currently doing, make sure that you shut your computer down to avoid further damage. Get the hard drive out and connect it to a safe computer, which will be your non-bootable secondary drive. You can also buy a USB drive caddy so connecting your hard drive to another computer will be as easy as eating a pie.

 

Just make sure that the second computer is aware that it is just the secondary drive because if it acts as the primary or the master drive, it will boot your operating system while that is being connected to that secondary computer, and you will not like that when it happens.

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The best thing to do is to have a strong defense—an anti-spyware and anti-virus to beat all those hacking software up. Good news! Some software can be got 

which offer available rootkit detection scanner that are for free.

Step #3: Be your software’s temporary doctor. Try to check it by yourself. You can utilize the secondary computer’s anti-virus, anti-rootkit scanners, and anti-spyware to get rid of any damage to your hard drive. Or in short, you can perform some first-aid to your system.

Step #4: Refer to your original drive. For sure, you would want to recover what you can still recover. ​You can definitely recover those memories through photos or videos saved on your computer drive or perhaps the songs it took you years to collect and download. You can simply grab a clean drive like a DVD or CD, then copy everything there. Do not let hacking steal your precious memories and precious files.

Step #5: Put everything back together when it is safe to do so. You can get your files back to your original computer drive when they have been cleaned from all infections. Ensure that you have back-up files.

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After bringing back all the files to your computer, prepare for the next recovery process that you have to accomplish too. You can now refer to the dip switches located on your drive. You can change them back to being the master drive as before.

 

Step #6: Make it good as new! As was said here before, do not trust any pop ups or message stating that your computer is finally free of virus. It could be true and then again it may not be true. What you can do is to manually wipe your old hard drive and make it as good as new. By doing so, the drive will be completely empty.

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After doing so, you should grab an erase utility that can help you completely clean your hard drive. Now, this may take some time so just relax and be patient while waiting for the drive to be overwritten over and over again, to make sure that it is totally emptied of infections.

Step #7: Go back to the first step. When you bought your computer, there had to be an original and free operating disk that came with the package. If there is none then go and get a new one. Do not just buy anything that you see. Make sure what you get is very dependable, clean, and trusted—this is to avoid repeating the problems over and over again. It is now time to reload your operating system.

 

​This time get it from an install media that is trust -worthy and very dependable. Before you become trigger happy and install everything you want, double check that everything is safe.

Step #8: Build a strong defense! This time, learn from your mistakes. Go and download a strong anti-spyware, anti-virus, and even anti-root kit detection scanner so you can make sure that things like this will never happen twice.

Step #9: Scan everything and then back them up! If this incident happens again, it is always better that your files are already backed up. After all, it is you who is being dragged and damaged because of it.

 

Keep in mind, prevention is better than cure!