Hello. I was a member of a community forum that will remain nameless, and having spent about three years there I got targeted by someone who didn't like me and had ability to utilize or even make spyware programs. Through his ability to manipulate me via social engineering I eventually trusted him and while I can't say for absolute certain how he managed to infect me I have a very good idea how he may have been able to and I can pinpoint the time frame of when I seemed to be infected by him. It was most likely caught via an attachment his sent me through emails we exchanged.
from the apparent infection onwards, this person would harass me and would quote things I'd say word for word to friends I was having IM conversations with on social applications and would throw personal attacks against me about my personal life that only my friends on the social application I was using should have been privy to.
He was able to see all my Discord messages and would stalk me on gaming outlets (not just Steam) with open chat messages. And someone who I knew from the same community forum made me aware that he openly admitted to spying on me by the end.
This infection happened on an older Windows 7 computer that I was using as my main at the time. However I used numerous antivirus programs and could not find ANY problems, nothing detected even though this person was continuing to catch my personal messages and attempted to blackmail me over them along with several other bad things. I used Malware Bytes, AVAST, Microsoft Security Essentials and a couple of lesser known anti virus applications thoroughly and nothing was able to detect anything bad.
I want to use the computer again because it has decent specs but I am very worried about what kind of spyware could be on the computer or if the computer could have some kind of BIOS infection or something worse. It's more serious to me because it was a targeted spyware attack by someone who wanted to infect me personally. I even had to buy a new router to appease some of my paranoia when setting up my new cheaper spec'ed computer that I am using to type this on.
I'd really like some help or advice please
from the apparent infection onwards, this person would harass me and would quote things I'd say word for word to friends I was having IM conversations with on social applications and would throw personal attacks against me about my personal life that only my friends on the social application I was using should have been privy to.
He was able to see all my Discord messages and would stalk me on gaming outlets (not just Steam) with open chat messages. And someone who I knew from the same community forum made me aware that he openly admitted to spying on me by the end.
This infection happened on an older Windows 7 computer that I was using as my main at the time. However I used numerous antivirus programs and could not find ANY problems, nothing detected even though this person was continuing to catch my personal messages and attempted to blackmail me over them along with several other bad things. I used Malware Bytes, AVAST, Microsoft Security Essentials and a couple of lesser known anti virus applications thoroughly and nothing was able to detect anything bad.
I want to use the computer again because it has decent specs but I am very worried about what kind of spyware could be on the computer or if the computer could have some kind of BIOS infection or something worse. It's more serious to me because it was a targeted spyware attack by someone who wanted to infect me personally. I even had to buy a new router to appease some of my paranoia when setting up my new cheaper spec'ed computer that I am using to type this on.
I'd really like some help or advice please