Help I think I am being watched!

My son was recently arrested by the DEA and I think they are monitoring my phone and internet and I have become invisible.My son used to have this laptop and he lists my address and phone number as his even though he hasn't been living here.He was ordering research chemicals online. So there is the motivation.

When this started I was looking for a job sending about 100 resumes a week since January. No one called or emailed me back. Then I switched phone service and started to piggyback on my neighbors wireless all of a sudden I had 5 calls in one day and numerous job emails. It was like I have been invisible. I would think it was all in my head but I have had several people tell me they have email me but they have disapeared. Also my sent emails and my inbox have had emails that are there and then they are gone again. They have been rearranged and moved. Emails I sent are gone but I know i sent them because the email address autofills. This is happening on all three of my email accounts.

Also I will close the internet and when the browser is reopened its on a page I looked at hours or days ago. My phone also cuts off for no reason and sounds like an echo chamber.

Please advise. Am I going insane? Is this possible? What can I do? This has trashed my trying to find a job and I am two weeks from being homeless. I need to fix this problem and fast. I have reset my computer to earlier time and updated all my virus,malware and firewall protection (virus and malware keeping getting turned off) I ran several scans and it looks like my computer is clean. I don't know what else to do.

I was trying to prove this was all in my head because the alternative is too much to deal with. I sent the following email from one of my accounts and cc'd my two other accounts. It shows in my sent emails but never reached my other two accounts. I used the word drugs all in caps to catch anyones attention The email reads:

Please stop #ing with my phone and or email I need to find a job or I am going to be homeless in two weeks. I have not broken the law. You are barking up the wrong tree my friend. Be a decent human being and stop screwing up my job search. Namaste!

WTF? Please advise.

reply to post by Ladysophiaofsandoz

I don't know what else to do.

Ditch your current ISP and get a new one.

Get a new email with a different email provider.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder



Is this even possible though?

This sounds like a version of what is called a "Man in the middle" attack that hackers use to get personal information, among other reasons. I imagine that law enforcement would employ this same type of strategy in some circumstances, but it would make more sense for them to monitor communications from you AND to you in order to see both ends of the correspondence. It may just be coincidence that you got those calls after you piggybacked your neighbors wireless, which by the way, I would not openly admit to. I applied for jobs for MONTHS and received zero calls back. The job market is very saturated right now, so not getting any call backs for long periods of time is pretty common. As far as the FedGov monitoring you, I would argue that they do that anyway, regardless of your son's circumstances.

dude that sounds messed up, and it doesn't sound like the cops, because if you watch csi miami, they wouldn't do things that you would notice, like delete your emails or mess up your phone, because they wouldn't want you to know they are watching, assuming they are looking for evidence of you doing bad stuff, because they want to arrest you or something...

so none of that makes sense.


you probably have some REALLY bad luck, a lazy cop just sent a super virus to your house to hack and mess up your stuff, or your son was part of some secret breaking bad style hacker group mixed with drug making guys and they want to cover their tracks, because your son left stuff about his stuff in YOUR stuff.....

so maybe they are like "this guy is that dudes dad, mess up his computer so the cops etc." i don't know lol....


wow i went on a rant! anyway, i am mildly paranoid so don't get mad at me lmao...

My neighbor gave his permission and I am sliding him $20 a month to help pay his bill.

Is there anyway to prove a "man in the middle" hack? Could I find out who it is? If it is the DEA I would love to prove it this is WAY over the top and out of line.

reply to post by Ladysophiaofsandoz


why don't YOU hire some hacker dudes to find out whats going on? jeez dude, call the geek squad or something haha.

Originally posted by SoymilkAlaska
reply to post by Ladysophiaofsandoz

 

why don't YOU hire some hacker dudes to find out whats going on? jeez dude, call the geek squad or something haha.

That's not very nice..... She's trying to get information and it really seems like her present ISP is being tampered with, as when she uses a different ISP everything goes through fine. I really am at a loss as to how to figure it out, but being rude to her is certainly not helping this poor woman as she's already freaking out...

Close your e-mail accounts, make new ones and change your ISP, that should help...
Wish you luck for job seeking

Originally posted by Ladysophiaofsandoz
reply to post by ChaoticOrder

 

Is this even possible though?

Of course it is possible. There are plenty of ISP businesses and plenty of free email services.

I like lavabit for my free email account. But it's not like gmail, you need to use something like Outlook or Thunderbird and set the account up manually.

reply to post by Ladysophiaofsandoz


Just gonna put this out there.....

You said you are having issues with your home internet, messages not getting through, stuff like that. you also said you are having issues with your phone.

What type of internet connection do you have? Dsl? cable? fiber? Dsl will be going out over your phoneline unless they installed a separate line into your home just for that. any problems with the phone, would affect the dsl and vice versa.

SOME, but only some, of the things you mentioned could literally be a crappy internet connection dropping enough packets that messages aren't being received on the other end. What email services are you using? web services like hotmail or yahoo? A service provided by your isp?

It makes a huge difference as web services are secured with SSL and have HTTPS:// in the address, man in the middle attacks are unlikely there, that's why online banking is "safe". Any content sent over an SSL connection is encrypted, so even if "the hackers" get it, it's basically useless.

That is why they don't do random crap like this, they PHISH (not like my name though) and pose as other entities to get you to hand over your info.

I don't see the dea being so inept as to actually delete or read emails. The type of monitoring your friendly government is doing, doesn't take place outside your house in a black van like on CSI sorry. It takes place in a quiet locked room at the telephone company network station, or main hub. It's completely transparent to you, you have no idea it's taking place because it literally works like this:

Everything sent over the phone system and internet is broken into frames (phone system) or packets (internet). These bounce around the network and get routed to their destination.

But thanks to the NSA, they now come into a point and basically, in laymen terms, get photocopied. They don't do anything to your traffic but look at it, in such a way, that you have no clue they did.

Only stupid isps do stuff you can notice, like comcast or rogers forging packets to mess with bittorrent. In that situation, they send a request to the host you are downloading from, telling them to sever the connection, but they send the request pretending to be you, by forging packet headers. You can spot that yourself if you know how.

NSA or government level monitoring? Good luck spotting that, it's way more advanced than actually "tapping" a phone line, the whole system is tapped already.

Thanks to everyone for the advice. FYI I was on cable provider now I am on phone so two different lines and I just had the line checked sorry forgot to mention that. Email 2 gmail accounts and one mail.com account. I may even switch computers I have an old one laying around. I will start out with all new and see what happens.

I had hoped it wasn't the authorities monitoring me. I am pretty politically active and I post some things that are a little anti establishment but I really didn't want to think they would watch a 40 year old wife and mother over such things.

I don't know if any of you remember last year when those two nuke power plants were going underwater durring the flooding. News stories and youtube stories would vanish as soon as they posted to the net. The only proof they were ever there was the screen shots people posted. Since then I have been a bit more paranoid of the PTB and the flow of information on the interwebs.

Get some friends to email you and see if the emails come through ok.

reply to post by Ladysophiaofsandoz


I wish my son was out he was my IT guy. He was also questioned by the Feds a few years back for hacking and getting him and his friends on the payroll of companies they didn't work for and hacking credit scores and news sites. He also programmed for Waffles.com. What a dummy to do anything remotely questionable on the computer after that..

reply to post by Ladysophiaofsandoz


I was ruthlessly hacked by still unknown parties for over 1 year so I can share with you some things I have learned. First, as others already noted, professional hackers try to be unseen and unnoticed. If you can see changes to your email directories then I suspect yet another Gmail "Feature" is responsible. All that is required to intercept your email is an MX record redirect on a remote server somewhere; you would never know it was happening. Second, do not rely upon anti-virus software to protect you it can only catch the most childish hack attempts. Professional hackers re-flash the BIOS in network switches or wireless routers to steal your information; again, most would never know it is happening to them. Third, once your network has been compromised you must assume a root-kit was installed somewhere. Without a hardware firewall with very restrictive rules in place it is impossible to stop someone from remotely activating the root-kit. I use old Dell PowerEdge servers and recently learned that a root-kit can be installed into the SCSI back-plane or power supply monitor controllers. Buying new equipment is some times the only sure-fire method of being absolutely sure a hack is killed. Fourth, unless your wireless router is set to use WPA2 only with 256 bit AES encryption any good high school kid can hack your network. Finally, any password shorter than 21 characters is a security risk; think pass-phrases and not passwords.

The best advise I can give you is to stop using unencrypted email. Use free services such as LockBin to send truly secret messages.

I hope some of this helps.

Best regards,
Z

reply to post by Ladysophiaofsandoz


There are billions of computers and billions of People using computers. What makes you 'rationally' believe that your activities are being monitored? Can you fathom the sheer amount of text messages that are being sent right now?

your isp or tcp is screened automatically as is everyones but referring it onto the next level would not happen unless it warrants it. think of it this way also... the screening that stops 'spam' or attempts to of emails that are philsing or just down right fraudulent... they are identified and if you receive them... it has a label. Well that is the isp's screen process. tcp is not as efficient but all wireless signals (mobile) can be piggybacked from just about everywhere.

simple answer is, your emails may just have a virus so locked or quarrantined = missing.

Originally posted by DrZrD
reply to post by Ladysophiaofsandoz

 

The best advise I can give you is to stop using unencrypted email. Use free services such as LockBin to send truly secret messages.
Z

might restrict nusiance two bit hakers but no such thing as secret messages.

reply to post by Thurisaz


I would hope they wouldn't be. It's not me that I think they are interested in but my son who has been in trouble for hacking in the past and is now being held on a federal marshals hold and is looking at an 80 year sentence for importing research chemicals using the computer. Before that the Feds had him picked up for things he had done on the computer. Heck the DEA even had a code name for him and they have been on several sites pretending to be him to entrap people. I am a nobody who has never been arrested in my life. I live a clean honest life but my son is not a snowflake. They are doing everything they can to put him away forever.

Dump your current ISP, Phone provider (including mobile) and email accounts. Then run multiple anti virus/malware and rootkit scanners on your pc's/laptops (Malwarebytes is very good) this will make sure that any monitoring that is being done is not software on your pc (although I agree with previous posters that this sounds like a MIM attack), Make sure that your firewall and security software is up to date and enabled also make sure that your operating system is fully patched with the latest security patches. Check out the security section on Majorgeeks then use this software to browse the web and use email etc. Also use a public pc (like an internet cafe or library) and change every single password for all your online stuff. I'd also suggest you get your son to change all his current address details to where he actually lives rather than your property. Sounds like they suspect you of being a terrorist or something...

Appealing to their humanity is a waste of time, they couldn't care less if they destroyed your life, innocent or not.