Hey everyone, I really need your help! A day ago, I made the mistake of downloading a sketchy exe file, and as you can guess, it turned out to be malware. After running it, I quickly noticed some weird activity - the next day my social media accounts were compromised, and I found myself getting warnings from Google and Facebook about suspicious activity. As a precaution, I changed all of my passwords on a different PC and really hope I've secured my accounts.
I've since run several scans with Bitdefender, Malwarebytes, and the Windows malicious software removal tool, but they only flagged a few low-risk items from old programs. I also found a remote control application that I've now uninstalled.
However, there's still a strange program called "startup" that pops up in the Control Panel with changing Chinese characters every time I open it. It doesn't appear in the task manager or the startup folder, and autorun shows everything as verified. It's frustrating because I'm worried that the hackers just took my info and left me with this mess. After everything that happened, I'm wondering how can it be that no malware was detected? Am I being overly cautious thinking of resetting my PC? I'd really like to avoid that, but I feel lost. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Also, I'm on Windows 10 if that matters.
5 Answers
You should definitely consider resetting all your passwords as well. They might have already sent your account details elsewhere. It's crucial to secure your accounts with two-factor authentication wherever possible.
Absolutely agree with the reset. Just remember to back up your important files, and do it using an external hard drive that you don’t connect to the internet for uploads. After you send your data over, keep monitoring your accounts for any suspicious activities.
Honestly, the safest option right now is to do a full reset of your PC. Start with a clean installation of the OS. Once that’s done, make sure to change every password you've used on any service, ideally from a different computer. It's possible that malicious software from that exe gave hackers full access, so it's better to play it safe than risk further issues.
Yep, a complete OS reinstall is the way to go. The risk of rootkits or other hidden malware is just too great at this point. And as for your social media accounts, make sure you also enable two-factor authentication on them for added security.
And don’t forget to keep an eye on your credit activities! You might want to freeze your credit if you start noticing anything unusual.
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