I need your help rather desperately. A cyberstalker lives in my building, and has been hounding me for months. He had already gained physical access to my office and home computers, so he definitely knows more about the machines’ configs, IDs, IPs than I do. He once changed my home computer’s homepage to something else.

To be on the safe side, I always carry the machine with me, and have decided not to let my home laptop go online. I disabled all network-related functions in the bios (wf, LAN, Bluetooth etc), disabled network adaptors, disabled lots of things in the “services” (network connections, workstation, browers, wf), turned off folder/printer sharing, added new inbound and outbound rules to the firewall (block all). However, he has always managed to hack into the system, and shows no signs of going away. I have already taken the machine back to the factory for reinstallation 2 times in 3 months. Today I reset COM security (no remote access), then my user and admin accounts simply disappeared, and I could not even log in. I used the recovery discs given to me by IBM, but after installing everything, my former settings remain unchanged.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Please keep your computer language simple, for I am a bona fide computer idiot. Thanks a million.

Format the drive completely and reinstall Windows - or buy a new drive if you feel so inclined.

If this person has gained physical access to your home, you should be contacting law enforcement.

Format and reinstall Windows, apply all security fixes

Install ZoneAlarm free firewall

Block all incoming connections

Block all outgoing connections except 80 and 443

Always get prompted for Outgoing connections

Contact law enforcement about his activities

Good morning, Maddie.

I think, at this point, as you were told by BillV and WCNA, you need to involve law enforcement.  If, as you say, this person still finds a way into your machine, with ALL networking disabled, then he / she MUST still, somehow, have physical access to your machines, as it's literally impossible to continue to access your machine, remotely, with those disabled.  

The only other suggestion we can make is to obtain software to FULLY encrypt your hard drive and data, with a password that ONLY you know, that is entered IMMEDIATELY at boot, and NOT leave your machine running, at ANY time that you're not physically sitting with it.  If this person is getting your data, at that point, you'd need to be more concerned with physical security and / or the possibility of cameras, etc, being able to view your activity, where he could be literally gaining information 'over your shoulder.'

At this point, assuming this person persists, you have a very REAL reason to be concerned, as again, they MUST have physical access to your machines(s.)  There's really nothing more that anyone here can do, with respect to helping you, further.  I wish you luck, and again, suggest that it's time to involve law enforcement, if you've not done so, already.

This reminds me of a series of posts from a couple of months ago. But I'll chip in.


All you have to say at this point is say you think that someone broke in to your house.

If the only access is physical access to the box, meaning it person walked up to it and placed "his" hands on it, and the box has never been out of your house... Well either you let "him" in, or "he" broke in.

Out of curiosity what is the account he created with more privileges than your account?