UKC

Is is possible to 'hack' into another persons account on MSM Messenger? My daughter has been accused of sending 'poisionous' messages, we she is adamant she hasn't sent and says that her account must have been hacked into.

Can anyone help?

In reply to 'Hilda': if someone knows someone well enough they may know their secret question answer after getting password wrong a few times? otherwise i have no idea.

In reply to 'Hilda':

I think your daughter's computer has been infected with a virus. By sending messages (usually links) to people in her msn account, the virus will spread to that account if the user click on those links, their computer will be infected with the virus as well.

I suggest you ask your daughter to inform all her friends on msn messenger to not open links that she sends and then do an anti virus scan if possible. I dunno if anything will be detected, but if virus is detected, remove/ quarantine it. If that still doen not work, maybe u might have to format the hard drive but everything will be gone!

Good luck

In reply to 'Hilda':

If she logged in on a public computer - at school say - and failed to log out properly from it afterwars, it's conceivable that someone could have just started sending obnoxious messages. Otherwise, like others have said, it can be possible to guess the 'secret answer' to get in, or wheedle the password out of her in other ways.

I presume it's other parents giving you grief - I'd tell them that you think someone got into her account, you've made her change her passwords and have had a chat about basic internet security (don't choose obvious passwords, change them regularly etc).

It might also be worthwhile explaining that it's harder to read tone over the internet - so what seems funny to you might be misread totally by somebody who can't see that you're laughing.

In reply to 'Hilda':

Secret questions frequently revolve around things like what you mother's maiden name was.

So do questions like "what's your star wars name?" or similar...

ie fairly easy for someone closeby to learn


What anti-virus software do you have, is it updated (frequently) and do you visit http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com for critical security updates (there were a batch released last week that even made news headlines)

In reply to 'Hilda': its a piece of piss to hack into messenger using a readyly available "net bot" you can get em off google,if shes accused and your positive that its not here contact msn and get them to check the ip addresses

In reply to 'Hilda': Thanks for all your advice.

It's been a nightmare for my daughter - we've found out that one of the parents has been distributing copies of the alledged comments to my daughters friends parents, and as a result she's being ostricised!

So far we've haven't even seen what she's supposed to have said. The only access my daughter has to the internet in at my work, when I'm present - as she sits next to me, I can see what she is doing and she's only been on MSN twice in the last four weeks.

Our home computer is out of action, since we found out it was riddled with 'spyware' after we converted to broadband - as I omited to enable the firewalls, and didn't have anti-spyware. We formated the whole drive and so far haven't reloaded any software.

My daughters a nice kid, who can't sleep, doesn't want to go to school anymore.

I just can't beleive the vindictiveness of these parents

In reply to 'Hilda':

If you are relying on XP's built-in firewall, don't.
If you have XP, then make sure you have Service Pack 2 (and all subsequent critical patches)

Firewall - http://www.zonelabs.com

Anti-virus - either Avast or AVG do free for persoanl use versions.

http://www.avast.com
http://www.grisoft.com

If on broadband, it is better to get an ADSL modem that has a built-in firewall, as well as the software one on your computer eg Zoom X5 or X6 (wireless)

As for how you deal with these parents, I don't know. Other than ask for the dates these messages were sent, and see if they tie in with the specific dates your daughter was using MSN, in order to prove them wrong.

(I'm assuming she can't access MSN at school - where her account could be hijacked as suggested earlier in this thread)

Also get into her MSN account, and change the password and security question.

In reply to 'Hilda': what do they say she has been saying?

In reply to 'Hilda':

It's outrageous the parent didn't confront you first before accusing her of that. Once you've got the tech problems sorted you should demand the parent concerned circulate a retraction or threaten a libel action.

In reply to Dominion: Hi, thanks for your response - she can't access MSN at school - we've blocked all the contacts in the address book, but not changed her password yet - but it's next on my list.

Thanks for the advice - I really appreciate it.

In reply to 'Hilda': msn can tell you what i p address l;ogged into the account this can be used to track any abuse give them a bell

In reply to chris_s:

The problem is its a case of treading carefully - accussing another childs parents of Libel isn't going to help my daughter, and would probably end up as a war of words. I've been so angry over the past 24 hours, I've needed time to calm down, before saying anything.

We're talking to her year head tonight as the parents have been kicking off there too.

I know if it was my daughter that had received these messages, I would have contacted the parents immediately to see what was happening - as twelve year old girls can blow things out of all proportions, and to get the real story.

In reply to djviper: Thanks for that - we've tracked down use useage though the 'History' (only twice in the past few weeks), so we should be able to corrolate any 'other' usage.

In reply to 'Hilda':

Just thinking about how bloody awful girls are at catty, bitchy behaviour, it might be worth asking for a copy of what has been sent so you can get to the bottom of it.

I've suddenly thought that if someone changes their display name to that of your daughter, a non-savvy parent wouldn't know that the person appearing to type as 'Hilda's Daughter' could be anyone. The vital thing is to be able to check the email address at the top of the conversation box.

It's also quite easy to get an email address that's close, but not the same as, your daughter's. Look at all the times people put up spoof posts on UKC with names close to those of somebody else (mostly in jest, here). It would only take a change of an _ to - or the insertion of an 0 for an O and it would look nearly identical.

In reply to 'Hilda':

I was half-joking - it's certainly not something to go wading in with. I don't know of any cases involving libel and children anyway, it just ocurred to me that if you transposed your daughter's experience to a wholly adult situation I think you'd have strong grounds for a defamation action.

If you can gather enough concrete evidence that it wasn't your daughter, and this can presented to the parent concerned, then a retraction would be a fair thing to ask for. Indeed, it should be the least they would offer to do.

In reply to 'Hilda':

my sister whos 15 had the same problem with people sending accusive messages from her account. Were pretty sure it was someone she knows from school. It got reported to MSN but ive not sure what they've done about it but i know they take it seriously.