My best friend was hacked about a year before I was. We never knew who hacked into her computer, but it made her life hell. When I was hacked, it was by someone I knew who was a software engineer.
The first thing I noticed was my email started disappearing. My daily email went from close to 100 emails a day to maybe four. I knew something was up, but had no idea how to know for sure. Then came the day I received nothing. I phoned my ISP (by then my utilities had been cancelled) and learned my username and password had been changed by someone using my credit card number and date of birth as proof as to who I was. I then arranged a security code to be put on the file for me to use, should this ever happen again.
It's very important if you find yourself in this type of 'dispute'(because third party companies don't want to be involved, though the technical support people can be very supporitive and helpful), that you have your accounts given a security word or code anyone presenting themselves as you must have to change important information on credit cards, bank accounts, or anything else that, were they to be tampered with, could make your life unbearable.
And get a new credit card! One relative was shocked to find her credit card was maxed to the limit after she had left her husband, who then made extensive purchases over the internet (we are still wondering what he did with all that make-up!).
After learning what was going on in my case, I did a search in Google and found some people who were very helpful. They told me to get a firewall and gave me a few tips on how to use it, and to use screenshots, which is making a picture of what you see on the screen, and saving it as a visual document. You may need screenshots down the road as evidence, so save each one by its date. Don't ignore this advice, because if things get bad, you will need the evidence; without it, no-one will be able to help. If it turns out your screenshots won't be needed, you can always delete the files in a couple of years.
The next thing to happen was, my files at my office disappeared, but I was too unaccomplished to do much about that except inform the other staff about what was happening and try and get security tightened up. At home, however, my new firewall sent out an alarm that NetBus was trying to contact the internet.
NetBus
I'd heard of NetBus, so quickly did a search on Google and found out it was one of several very bad Trojan spy programs that could be operated by a remote user, who could run mine as if he were sitting at my keyboard, giving him the power to read everything I typed, delete programs, or rearrange the code in the operating system. (My hacker rearranged my hardware connections to strange ports, and later did bad things to the code in my operating system. The technician who spent hours saving a couple of databases for me said he had never seen anything like it in his life.)
I printed out instructions to get NetBus off my machine, taking screenshots of the file locations. The hacker's name was right there, which I did not understand at the time, but I learned that any files downloaded onto your computer by another computer will show the originating computer's name. Another reason why screenshots are important.
The logs in the firewall showed his computer's number (each computer has its very own identity). This number also shows up in the full headers of any email sent from his machine, unless he knows how to forge email addresses. Fortunately I had the numbers from his machine at his home as well as from his work. With these as evidence, and the screenshots, I was able to go to the police.
As I understand it, in Canada there is no law against 'domestic' hacking (i.e., your spouse's computer) from a personally-owned computer. In my case, the police were very concerned when they saw the piles of screenshots and read the stuff he had sent me, and because he had done this from his work, they were able to contact his corporation and inform them that one of their computers was involved in a criminal investigation. Within 24 hours he was laid off. The police also had me get a program that would back-trace suspicious activity, and that wound up being a big help. He tried hacking me again from his next place of work a couple of months later, and lost that job within two days of my forwarding the new screenshots to the detective on the case.
Since then, I have learned how to better protect myself without becoming paranoid.
I find it's worth it to pay a public account provider to forward my emails to my ISP's email account. That way, I have front-line filters in place to screen out senders I don't want contacting me; sadly, that may include people we knew in common who refused to believe what he was doing, and who continued to send out group emails with my address on them. Which raises another point.
Group Emails
If you send out emails to a group, use the BCC line for this, not the TO line, so that each person receives the email without seeing everyone else's email address. Not only does this ensure some privacy, but if someone replies back to you in a personal fashion, you will be ensured that no-one else will receive their reply. I had a good friend who hit the 'reply' button to someone who'd sent out a group mailing in which some employment issue was raised...she was looking for another job, and everyone in the group, including her boss, got the reply!!!
If you see you are on such a group, ask the sender to either use BCC for group mailings or to simply take you off their list, as you will only accept private emails from them. Because my hacker was such a seemingly harmless and quiet guy, some of our acquaintance would not believe all this was happening, and would not honour my request. I felt badly having to terminate communications with them, but my safety was far more important.
Filters
I now use filters on my computer, both in my email program and in my firewall. You can set up your firewall filters to block out specific computer numbers (found in the full headers of incoming email) as well as ranges. When spam does make it through to my machine, I go to ARIN WHOIS on the net, enter the number of the originating computer, find out the owners and range numbers of the spammers, and block those numbers in the firewall's rules. This prevents bad people using space on the computer to do bad things in cyberspace.
Public Accounts
If you must use HotMail or Yahoo, don't use your real name. Think of something arcane, something your hacker would never guess to search under. For example, if you've fallen in love with Thai noodle salad since your last personal contact with them, set up a new account at hotmail (or wherever) and try ColdNoodles@hotmail.com, or something that cannot distinguish you from anyone else. Contact only those people you implicitly trust not to be in contact with the hacker (or is not being spied on themselves simply because they are in touch with you), and give them your new addy over the phone or in person. In time, the email you get at the old address will dwindle. If the hacker should find you, get another new address and repeat the process. The last time mine tried that I am absolutely sure of, was after I had sold the computer to some friends far away, almost two years after I had discovered NetBus running.
ISPs
Another thing you could do is get a new ISP, but if you don't, get a new address and user password every so often, and make sure they ask for that security word. If you are having your mail rerouted, you won't be losing any email so long as you don't forget to update the forwarding address. My hacker was smart, though, and got an account with my ISP, so they could do nothing, him being a client, saying it was my word against his. So I changed to another ISP (so did he), and eventually just sold my computer and stayed off line for a while. Currently I have an ISP that is not in his area, with better policies regarding abuse. I chose a user name that would not show up on any searches under my name, and I changed the name on my new computer as well.
Psychology
It goes without saying that hackers are very smart, but they are code heads, kings of strange domains where only they can make and break the laws; their wars are with other code-heads when engaged in code battles. They may be so linear and literal in their thinking that typical relationships are unworkable. If a normal person doesn't like you, they just go away. These people are predators, highly intelligent stalkers, and if they are hacking against an individual, they are obsessive, and can't go away until they have won whatever the object of their game is.
Think of Ted Bundy, so charming and bright that no-one who knew him could believe he was the monster he was later proven to be. My hacker, like many computer geeks, was very convincing as to his harmlessness, and I had a hard time believing it myself, but the professionals involved were the first people to warn me as to how dangerous this situation was, because I was not the first person he had hurt or frightened. The sad part was that the support I received was almost all from police, legal professionals, and counsellors.
Sometimes it doesn't matter what friends and family think if bad things are happening to you and they aren't offering to help. Predators cut their prey away from the herd, to facilitate their attack, so it is no surprise to professionals when they alienate you from your family and friends. But the ultimate alienation is death. Many women in North America have died even while under the protection of restraining orders.
It is therefore up to you - your responsibility - to read the lay of the land, come to terms with the reality of the situation, and protect yourself.
