Do you think the scan Geek Squad did is sufficient. Should I still rebuild?
nephartiti I admire your resourcefulness in contacting geek squad so quick ... well done.
If the geek squad was instructed to look for viruses or adware only, then they wouldn't necessary find any potential keyloggers since they wouldn't have specifically looked for them. Keyloggers or other type of spyware are not the same as viruses and are not detected by anti virus software. If they looked for keyloggers or any other type of spyware and didn't find anything then lets assume your pc is ok. Rebuilding can be onerous and can have its own set of problems. In the pc world rebuilding is considered the LRT :->
OK assuming you will prevent physical access to your pc in the future the next step is securing your data that can be accessed from other computers without the use of spyware and keyloggers. These include any online accounts you have such as email, banking, amazon, etc.
If someone knows your email address, email server and email password they can set up an email client on any pc with those same settings and access your email without deleting them from the server. You should change your email password used to log into the email server. Normally this password is configured in the email software so you don't have to type it everytime you access your email. You would have to contact your email provider to find out how to change the password. The other thing you can do is get an additional different email account that your H does not know about. They are freely available through hotmail, google, yahoo etc.
The next step is to change any passwords used to access online banking or online shopping accounts. These accounts can also be accessed from any pc with knowledge of the account number and password. Sometimes these online services have a series of security questions that can be answered to obtain forgotten passwords. If this is the case then change them to questions that your H does not know the answers to.
When choosing passwords they should be sufficiently strong to avoid being easily guessed or cracked using hacker software. Not expecting your H to use hacking software but regardless when you go online there are plenty of other people who will, so let's be safe from everyone. A sufficiently strong password should be at least 8 characters long and include at least one uppercase character, one lowercase character, one number and one special character like ! or ? or *. The password should not be a dictionary or slang word or a word somehow associated with you. To make it easier to remember it can be word-like such as "Sn0w%man". Use the same password as much as possible. This is easier than trying to remember many passwords. Write the password down on a piece of paper and put it in a safe place to be used if you forget it. Lastly change your password regularily so if someone guessed it they could only use it until the next change. Once every three months should suffice.
