Yes, typically a person with the skill to completely root you without leaving a trace anywhere or setting off Windows Defender alarms (including adding undetectable persistence) will leave a gigantic, unmistakable calling card like changing your background to weeb shit. This is how you know they are true hackermen. In it for the lolz and not to actually sit do anything remotely useful or profitable or even educational. Wallpaper lolz. That’s it.

Use a TempMail address with a randomized name and print that on the resume. Then tell them you aren’t sure about them or if they sell info to third-parties and you don’t want their affiliate marketers shitting up your inbox. Let them know you’ll give them your real email after you get hired and verify them.

There are a lot of conditions and circumstances that could cause this with nothing nefarious going on. If you are on the latest Windows 10 or 11 and use any newer mouse that has its own software (RGB or rebinding with iCUE or Synapse for instance), the device (in part) is actually virtualized by Windows for safety reasons (and to allow the mouse to store profiles internally) and this can create strange delays or stutters at times depending on a lot of things. Or depending on your system resource load, USB input can halt entirely and “queue” your movement up in a sort of buffer so that when it frees up the CPU and system it will perform those movements after a delay of up to a few seconds. This is compounded depending on so many other things like if you were in a full-screen, GPU-heavy app or hi-def stream, RDP/VNC running, etc. If Windows or your mouse software was updating in the background, that’s another possibility of what could look like ghost movement or mismatch between your hand and the pointer.

However, if you were “fighting” against it and did have control but felt like another person also was in real-time control and/or it was doing this and autonomously clicking things 15-30 seconds after you took your hand off, that is a bit more concerning. As a minimum, you could make sure to disable any remote connections and remote support, close those ports in your firewall, and run a full Malwarebytes scan. The nuclear option is a Windows Reset, which will keep photos and documents but reset Windows back to stock. The thermonuclear option is a fresh Windows install via USB, sending the whole HDD back to Day One.

Sandbox them. I used to work for Play Store support when Chromebooks were brand new and judging by the customers I interacted with, they were ideal for young children and the elderly. It’s been a long while since I was up on the latest Chromebook ecosystem, but I imagine it’s still the same, just all virtual cloud-based. The other option are iPads. My 80-year-old grandmother has the latest iPad and finds it far easier to use than her previous Android devices. Although with both, I could nuke and clean reinstall the whole thing with three button presses and 10 minutes max. Extreme option would be to set them up on some kind of VM solution you could remotely deploy (see also: basically automate), but then you’re looking at credentials, security policies, and always having remote access.