Worried that scammer has access to my phone
5 days ago I was getting weird emails and texts about resetting my Linked in password and thought nothing of it. Later that day my Instagram account was logged out and I immediately assumed I was hacked. Went into my email and behold, hacked! Emails were being deleted for password resets. I kept going back and forth all night with this scammer which was located in Nigeria according to Instagram. I set up 2FA On all my accounts and got an Authenticator app for all devices. My email was still being sketchy and emails were somehow still being read even after all the safety checks done, so I decided to make my email passwordless and can only access it through my Authenticator apps permission. I became really paranoid after reading some threads about malware maybe being installed on my phone( even though I’ve never opened a link from a spam email) but have visited some sketchy websites with pop ups. The scammer emailed me claiming he has pictures of me naked and masturbating and will share to all my contacts if I don’t pay him 1000$ in Bitcoin within 48 hours. Obvs I was a little shaken up but proceeded to delete the email and not respond. When I finally regained access to my Instagram account it kept saying it was linked to a Facebook page and needed permission to access Instagram ( which I don’t have it linked to my Facebook and when i proved my identity I couldn’t find anything linked to the Instagram at all in the settings really weird.)
I proceeded to make a new email and changed all the accounts I could think of to this email and set up Authenticator and 2FA. I completely wiped my phone and lost a lot of data ( I don’t really care) and re downloaded my apps one by one with no I cloud backup. I even changed the iCloud email.
I was playing around in my old email just keeping an eye on it last night because it keeps being bombarded with TINDER account password reset( I don’t have tinder) and noticed that in my “Blocked list “ there was a list of really weird emails that were blocked that I never blocked. 2 important ones that made me really nervous are 1: web watchers 2: one of my 2FA emails that I use to get into my account if I forget my password.
Another weird thing is whenever I have my email opened in safari the tab has a Tinder flame next to the outlook.com name which is so weird.
Am I being paranoid? I don’t really have anything to hide I just feel violated. Please any input will help I’m so anxious someone is watching my device.
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If you use the same or close to the same password for everything, all it takes is for 1 service to be breached, and a hacker can strong-arm the rest of your accounts.
It is important to either update passwords regularly or to use 2FA, autheicator apps being the strongest.
All right, so here is what I’ll recommend. Make a new email, new Facebook, new instagram, new everything. For your bank / job / school change your email address to your new one (if not managed by your institution.) Make these new accounts on a friend’s computer.
Next, factory reset the phone and your computer. You will need a usb stick for the computer and you will need to reinstall windows on it. Look up how to do it, it isn’t hard.
Basically, consider your current accounts ruined, your current OS installations dead, and start from scratch.
This may seem extreme, but from what I’ve read here I don’t think the right way to fix this is by manually hunting down the hack and plugging the hole. That will take too long, and frankly, not to be offensive, but I can tell you’re not the most tech savvy. Going nuclear is the only way you’re going to know you’re safe.
I recommend using something like Bitwarden
Set random unique passwords for each site.
And please make a printout or a copy of your passwords in an offline backup in the very rare chance you lose access.
try posting this to r/scams as well. they can be very helpful