Can't get my mom off my ass

This is going to be an embarrassing thread but I don't know who else to ask at this point. I've been lurking on lainchan for awhile now and thought since you guys are tech geniuses maybe you can help me with this issue. My mom has been stalking all of my internet accounts for as long as I can remember. I am an adult and live on my own. She was abusive to me as a kid and obviously this crazy behavior has only continued as an adult. I found out years ago that she had been stalking my private accounts when she called and confronted me about content on them. This was really confusing at the time because it's not like I was using my real name. I was about as anonymous as you can get with a random name and even a VPN. This behavior has continued to the point that I just assume she sees anything I post, anywhere. I do not know how she is doing it. It creeps me out. She doesn't even have a background in tech. I've even gone as far as nuking all of my accounts and starting over again. She still found my new accounts. How can this possibly be happening? I need advice on how to shake her stalker ass for good. Thanks for any advice. I am so tired of this.

>>19810 Keylogger (hw or sw), other spyware, contact at your ISP, black belt Google-fu, as may well be available for cash through private detective services; is she rich? Then house factors; assuming, why does she know where you live? Is she an at all acceptable houseguest? Exact same situation for phone number IMO, email a bit less so because you can autodelete emails by filter right as they arrive and this is not well-known, this minimizes contact very severely. Then social factors; anyone of your friends/acquintances who could at all conceivably be snitching on you? Any people you "have to" see for reasons of money? I went through this and it took one new phone number and three new home addresses and it's still not as effective as I'd like, but it seems I'll have to make up for the difference by keeping occult-inclined people out of my social and work circles and by living a peaceful, compassionate and joyful lifestyle.

>>19811 Is there any defense strategies I can take to deal with the issues you've mentioned? Is there a way I can check for a keylogger or Spyware? The only way I can imagine having that on my computer from her is if she sent me an email or something with it. Can't be a contact with my ISP, she doesn't even know what internet service is. Private investigator thing could be possible, but she's definitely not rich. She's an "acceptable" house guest. I've worked hard to slowly try to repair my issues with my family. Honestly she is still abusive and soykafty sometimes though. It's really difficult to cut your parents out of your life. None of my friends are snitches and I trust them all. I've talked to them about the issue and they're all aware of it. None of them like my mom at all.

>>19812 Sounds like a keylogger then. I'm not entirely convinced because I haven't heard of keyloggers in use in over a decade, but of course they would still exist; my hunch is more that you would be doxxing yourself with some kind of private speech somehow, but I'm not certain how you'd be discussing your new alts like that in a way that could reach your mom. It will be good for peace of mind to eliminate the possibility of keyloggers anyway. I don't believe in effective directed virus removal but you could try throwing a few AV's at your system; other lainons would have better ideas than me about that, I just used to run Windows Defender and TrendMicro HouseCall when I still had a windows setup. Regarding hw keyloggers - get a new one for 20 bucks, shelve your old one, and consider inspecting it for any and all modifications. If you want to detect screw removal, seal your screws with glitter nailpolish and photograph the glitter pattern, but that's more of a "future" issue. Do this before installing a new OS so you don't use a bugged keyboard to set up your new soykaf. I'd suggest putting your data on a separate HDD and then hopping to Devuan or OpenBSD. If you go for OpenBSD (harder but more hardened) make sure you remember to install a nice graphical desktop environment, the default is not all that user-friendly. Instructions here: https://www.birkey.co/2022-01-29-openbsd-7-xfce-desktop.html Make sure you backup your Firefox profiles (I guess ironically because they are an unlikely but possible cross-platform viral vector, so archive and don't migrate if you want extra certainty) if you keep bookmarks/would like to maintain a record of your browsing history to look at later. Other than that, don't install/disable SSH server, FTP server, Telnet server, any and all server. BitTorrent is a slight risk but I don't see that being an issue with a "stalky mom" attack model. That's how I would do it, it's good to be capable of migrating your data and installing a new OS in any case, if you want to be capable of maintaining your machines yourself.

>>19813 Even more thorough would be doing an RF inspection (e.g. if laptop, take into forest and measure for an hour or so, see if any unregulated transmissions can be pinpointed to your device), but that's incomplete because some transmitters only work passively (by backscatter) or after a remote activation. Seems like a bit overkill to me and I haven't gotten around to building such a measurement setup so that's in the "hypothetical additional assurance" department for me. Same for disassembling your laptop/PC to check for modification, although that is a lot more practical as it just requires a screwdriver.

Before you get too excited about Sam Fisher-grade keyloggers... When did she last have physical access? Did she email any links that you clicked? Audit emails in raw/"original" for dynamic/remote content. Go to gmer.net and click "Download EXE" button for a randomly named exe (to avoid being stopped by halfassed evasion techniques). All you need to do to use gmer is run it. The first screen will indicate if there's anything strange going on. Sometimes gmer shows things on the first screen that don't mean anything bad. If you're not sure you can save the log and send it to the developer (see FAQ). The vast majority of keyloggers are software and the vast majority of software keyloggers use techniques detectable by rootkit tools. Check your browser extensions and email filters/forwards. Get Process Hacker and look in the Network tab for unexpected Established connections to remote addresses. What kind of content did she confront you about? Go to the library and create some new accounts. Pretend you have never had accounts on anything before and start from scratch with no connections at all to your previous identities, including any identity or contact info that's supposed to be "background" or "private" like not providing your existing phone number to open an email account, etc. Make no assumptions about what she does or doesn't remember about style of names you like to use, avatars, signatures, tag lines, catchphrases, etc. Post and see if any indication of compromise arises. One of the hardest parts is to not try to take credit for or post links to to your past contributions, or drop hints about who you are. Do some research on yourself and see what can be found using previously known information: https://osintframework.com/ Same email behind the accounts? Or any other common factor?

>>19810 Hey OP, I'm sorry to hear you're dealing with this. Nothing feels quite as invasive as knowing you're burned by stalkerware. Since we're talking "mom" levels of a threat model, let's consider the most plausible options: 1. Compromised phone 2. Compromised laptop "Parental control" software is easily googleable and installable on most devices. Assuming each account you have is compromised, the next best course of action would be a factory reset on all devices and recreation of all of your accounts. It's a pain in the ass, but entirely feasible (speaking from personal experience). Keylogging should just be assumed at this point. >>19813 >Sounds like a keylogger then. I'm not entirely convinced because I haven't heard of keyloggers in use in over a decade I mean, CobaltStrike has that capability out of the box. It's not even that hard to write it yourself (keylogging, not a whole C2). Shit, look at most of the "is my girlfriend cheating on me" apps and a lot of them include this capability in some form. >I don't believe in effective directed virus removal but you could try throwing a few AV's at your system Ditto, nuke from orbit is never a bad idea. Avoiding/bypassing AV is so trivial I wouldn't even bother with scanning unless... well unless nothing, I just wouldn't even do it. Idk OP, fresh install on all devices and use new accounts. Use a bios password, FDE, never leave anything unlocked when unattended.

>>19810 i think this thread is getting over-paranoid. your mom doesn't know what internet service is. the cleanest way that's pretty much guaranteed to get everything is to delete all your current accounts and factory reset your devices. then create new accounts with minimal association to the old ones.

>>19810 >>19810 Your computers and cell phones most likely have a RAT, keylogger or VNC server (or similar) installed. The first thing you need to do is to reinstall your OS (read below) and reset the factory settings to your cell phone and tablet (if you have one). The way you should go about this is to first get the Windoze product key and make a backup (I recommend you write it out on paper/notebook as well). You can use this tool to get it from your computer: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html and export your web browser's book marks (but do not copy the browser profile). I would also get another keyboard as well (and throw out your old one). Then you need to get 2-3 empty flash drives (or a flash drive and external HDD). The flash drives should have capacity of 8GB or more. Choose a time when your mom is sleeping (try to estimate the right time) and download Xubuntu iso (https://xubuntu.org) and use Rufus (https://rufus.ie/en/) to make a USB flash drive that can used to boot the Xubuntu LiveUSB. I recommend downloading Xbuntu iso over BitTorrent because torrent clients (like Transmission: https://transmissionbt.com/download/) will verify the integrity of the iso file and I think it might be easier to hide the activity from your mom. I recommend that you install Xubuntu on your computer but you can also use the live system (but dual-booting is more convenient). Power off your computer, then enter the UEFI settings and reset the settings. Reboot your computer and use the UEFI settings to boot from the Xubuntu flash drive. Once you are in the Xubuntu live system connect to Internet. Now you need to change passwords of your all online accounts. Start with emails. Make sure to reset your cell phone and tablet (if you have one) to factory settings as well. You can use the Xubuntu liveUSB environment to access Goolag, Lainchan or IRC (and get help if you need it). Next, open the terminal (on your computer that has been booted from the Xubuntu LiveUSB). Now you want to install a package called "gparted". Run sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gparted to install it. Next, type sudo gparted in the terminal. Once the gparted GUI opens, select your Windoze partition and shrink it (reserve at least 20-30 GB for your Xubuntu installation). After Gparted is done resizing the partition close it and start the Xubuntu installer (located at desktop) and install Xubuntu on the newly reclaimed free space. Reboot the computer once the installer asks you. Open the UEFI settings again and edit the boot order so that Xubuntu will be booted automatically. Once you have booted into your newly installed Xubuntu installation, start backing up stuff from your Windoze partition (to your external HDD or flash drive). Once you are done backing up your files, unmount and disconnect your external HDD and flash drive. Don't forget to unmount the windoze partition as well. Next use lsblk command to determine which partition is the ESP partition. It should be small 100-550 MB FAT32 partition (confirm that you have found the right partition using mount and ls ). Once you have found the EFI System Partition, delete folders "windows", "microsoft" (leave only "Xubuntu folder) from it. Next, install gparted and launch it (just like in the live system). Now you need to delete all windows partitions but leave the EFI System Partition. After this is done, you need to reinstall Botnet 10 using the flash drive you used to install Xubuntu (or another empty 8+GB flash drive) in the previous step. Download Botnet 10 installation iso from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO and open terminal and use lsblk to determine which device is the flash drive you want to use. Then use sudo dd if=Win10_x64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=1M status=progress to make a Botnet 10 installation USB. If you want to dual-boot Xubuntu and Botnet 10, you need to reinstall Grub using the Xubuntu LiveUSB (or just delete Xubuntu partition(s) and reinstall Xubuntu) and then you need to select it as boot device from UEFI settings. You can also use the UEFI settings to set a boot password (but make sure you don't forget it). The boot password doesn't even have to be complex. >>19811 this.

>>19810 Your mother might have a P.I. doing the tracking. Most P.I. work these days is directly related to your problem.

Are you still using the same set of devices? If they've been tampered with, they could just be continuously leaking everything you do.

>>19819 Also, keep in mind that your mom might have paid some scumbag to install spyware on your devices! The reason why dual-booting is more convenient is that you can stop backing up files when you want and continue later (and you might realize later that your flash drive/external HDD doesn't have large enough capacity). Don't backup the browser profile but backup the bookmarks only! The profile can contain malicious settings and you don't really need it since you can setup your browser's settings quickly enough. The reason for throwing out the keyboard is that it might have hardware keylogger BUT it's far more likely that she (or someone she hired) installed spyware on your devices. If you want to buy a new keyboard, make sure to buy a wired one (just get a cheap wired Logitech K120 keyboard or similar). But I think it's unlikely that the keyboard has a hardware keylogger. Also, you should open your PC case and look around if there is something suspicious (but don't open your computer if it's a laptop).

Wow guys, thank you so much for all of this information. I feel like I should mention I'm buying a new computer soon (just a used Mac laptop, nothing special) since my current computer is literally falling apart. Hopefully with a new computer there's less of a chance it could be compromised. I am going to wipe my phone and tablet though as recommended. Old computer is going in the bin. My accounts are linked by email and phone number so I'm going to stop doing that. I'll make a ton of bogus emails and go through them. As for what she confronted me on, it was about being LGBT. She stalked my accounts to figure it out even though I hadn't told anyone. Obviously this was really messed up and almost life destroying. It has been years since then though. I'm kind of worried that she could still find me through my art though. I post art online and have a modest following. My plan is to maybe leave my current art accounts up that she knows about as a distraction. Then maybe she won't even look for new accounts (I hope.) My friends all agree about the private investigator thing being a real dangerous possibility. She's former law enforcement (sort of) so I wouldn't be surprised if she had contacts like that. Thanks again guys. I feel like maybe I can finally shake her off.

I agree with other lainons here that the most probable vector is spyware via physical access at some point, but we're honestly missing a lot of information to make any specific calls. Which would help, because it'd be a lot easier for you to just fix the specific problem than go full fort knox on everything you own and do to avoid missing something. Threat level mom means she probably won't have any idea how to pwn you a second time. There's no need to doxx yourself or anything, but a few general descriptions of whatever in your situation you think is probably relevant will go a long way. Examples: What are some websites you have accounts on? Which ones did she refer to? How possible is it she correlated your interests together? Do you use 2fa? Do you keep track of login IPs? What devices do you use, and what do they run? Could you be using compromisable software or could she have sent you malware? Can you elaborate on your digital hygeine and vpn use? What hardware do you use on them? What's your living situation like? How's your local network set up, and do you monitor it? How's it connected to your ISP? Who do you let in your front door? Have you changed locks recently? Is there anyone in your life she might be working with? Does she know a sympathetic professional who might be advising her? Could someone have gotten in while you were away or asleep? Etc. etc. Unfortunately the possibility space is pretty big, and although some things are far more likely than others only you really know the info to make those calls right now.

>>19824 What are some websites you have accounts on? I have accounts on the following; Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, Instagram and TikTok. And believe me I know tiktok is a trash fire for internet safety, I only use it to post art and watch cat videos. Which ones did she refer to? Twitter is the main one she referred to. However I have reason to believe she has access to other accounts as well. How possible is it she correlated your interests together? Very possible since my interests are pretty niche. Do you use 2fa? Yes, on everything. Do you keep track of login IPs? I don't. What devices do you use, and what do they run? Horrible acer laptop soon to be thrown out, runs windows. iPad running standard OSX. Samsung phone on Android. Could you be using compromisable software or could she have sent you malware? It's totally possible. I have opened files sent by her before. Can you elaborate on your digital hygeine and vpn use? I used to use PIA for years but haven't recently because I'm broke. But I would like to use them again. What hardware do you use on them? See above. What's your living situation like? I live with one roommate. He's literally 80 years old and a moron computer wise so I doubt he's pulling anything. How's your local network set up, and do you monitor it? I don't know anything about this. :( How's it connected to your ISP? No idea. I can find out though if you guys tell me how. Who do you let in your front door? Almost nobody because my crazy roommate hates visitors. Have you changed locks recently? No but I don't feel anyone is breaking in. My roommate is home 24/7. He would have noticed. Is there anyone in your life she might be working with? No, my friends are very tight knit and hate her ass. Does she know a sympathetic professional who might be advising her? Totally possible. She literally has former CIA contacts. Wish I was making that up, but it's true. Could someone have gotten in while you were away or asleep? Etc. etc. Just no way. Someone would need to be a ninja to get in and out of here without someone noticing. Hope this helps, I can easily provide more information.

>>19825 >former CIA contacts Ouchie. That's not a "regular mom" threat model anymore. Advise you consider non-Mac hardware because Macs are impractical to secure, so if you're going to have a digital fort-knox and not running MacOS the marginal benefit of still using Mac hardware is greatly reduced. You can probably save 50-70% on hw cost for near-identical performance by buying a second-hand laptop and some basic cleaning products, or maybe you get lucky and buy one off a real human being and not an animal. However, I do suspect you're also just getting your soykaf kicked in with Google-fu because it sounds like you got "triangulated" with a handful of keywords and then stylometry or similar here: >How possible is it she correlated your interests together? >Very possible since my interests are pretty niche. The solution to that is new account (I shouldn't have to reiterate this but with no surface-level links to existing accounts at all - not IP, not emailaddresss, don't even consider anything with a phone number) with a narrowed subset of your interests (so as to render triangulation impossible) and an obfuscated/chaffed communication style (e.g. add ingrammartical writing if you normally write correctly, adopt a few habits from some fictional character and avatar user while you normally don't, basically hit the "randomize character" button) to prevent stylometric identification; this necessary even in your artstyle if you're in as small of a niche as you seem to be indicating. Then you keep that up basically forever, and whenever it fails you repeat it with more precision in the first step (origin without history). Then be consistent in using VPN's and change providers at first suspicion (just do it esp. if it costs no extra money to do so), and when you don't have one use TOR or I2P gateways. Or GNUNet, do they have Internet gateways? I'm not sure. But whew, CIA frenz are one deep pain in the asshole problem. I suppose I might as well recommend migration out of the USA at that point, unless you're native American. Gonna have to tap out at this point because I'm really not interested in engaging in petty war with foreign govt. actors, not my farm not my pigs.

>>19826 Yeah that's fair lmfao. I don't think her ex CIA contacts are that amazing though. One is an old dude living in a nursing home and the other died years ago. But I won't pretend that threat isn't there, because it is. If anyone could recommend me a good laptop that's not a huge chunk of change I'll buy it. Thank you guys.

I doubt current feds are particularly conservative nowadays, just screenshot evidence and forward it to some lgbt support group or something.

>>19825 >Totally possible. She literally has former CIA contacts. Wish I was making that up, but it's true. Astonishing, the usual channerschizo fare is almost warranted today. I think that you are just compromised by some simple malware, most likely via physical access. Unless their contact has full access to the panopticon, or access to their treasure troves of firmware-write exploits and firmware/microcode signing keys that are each worth a fortune, you may be able to keep your devices clean. Ask yourself all questions from >>19824, try to doxx yourself and analyze your setup to determine the cheapest route to surveilling you. Raise the bar far above them with practices like the following: Restricting physical access, new hardware purchased in-person, reinstalling your OS (ideally FOSS), grammatical style not tied to previous nyms, no cross-contamination of the social graphs of your nyms, fresh accounts made with new emails and strong passwords that don't get reused, using chains of encrypted tunnels, keeping all software up to date, minimizing what software is installed, being mindful of what arbitrary data you allow applications to parse from untrusted sources (clicking on links, opening files, network connections), resetting/updating/securing your router, maybe changing ISP... This kind of thing is fun, but I think that most measures are fairly useless after being targeted by these guys, cuz at the end of the day unless you are willing to sit there removing mic/camera bugs from your room and buying new hardware (or just flashing it, if you can write to firmware) every other day, then the next time your living space is left unattended you will be compromised the old fashioned way. You could be watched by a PI and it would be almost impossible to know. There are so many ways to exfiltrate data out of a system when you are a physical attacker it's not even funny, hell there are ways to use light and sound emissions like TEMPEST, dirt-cheap ways to listen to someone with a laser pointed at a window (do you mumble?), all that. Security is hard and if your mom really does have pull to get some assistance from those CIA contacts, and if they are not just office workers, then they might literally be in your walls 'anon'. But take as many of the simple measures as you can and you'll be fine until the next time your computer is physically accessible to her. I hope for your sake this isn't the case because at that point the only way out would be to leave the country or something.

>>19829 Who knows. Creepy mfers. https://www.techdirt.com/2022/03/17/whistleblower-says-intelligence-community-members-filled-internal-messaging-system-with-hate-speech-support-for-insurrectionists/

>>19830 Yeah I don't want people freaking out and thinking my mom is some amazing CIA running high level government official. I doubt I have actual current CIA members digging through my soykaf or planting bugs. It's more likely they would just give her stalking advice or something along those lines. (If they're doing anything at all.) But I will follow all of the advice here and see if that works. Like I stated previously, her CIA contacts are one guy who died and one dude in a nursing home. I doubt CIA grandpa is in my walls. Or at least, I hope not!

I thought about this and one possibility is she knows your email and was able to guess your password. From there she found all your accounts.

>>19823 >Old computer is going in the bin You could use it as Linux computer. Once you are done backing up your files, you can just use Xubuntu installer (or gparted) to create a new partition table (this wipes everything from the disk). Note that some laptops require either msdos/MBR partition table or GPT partition table (if the laptop won't boot, try the other partition table type). But if you are really throwing the laptop to trash, then run DBAN (https://dban.org) to securely wipe the disk before throwing it out.

>>19823 If its been years and nothing has happened since, my guess is that someone close to you discovered one of your online accounts and it made its way to her. I don't think you really need to do anything unless it's still a problem or you still have something very very important to hide.

>>19810 My only lainon friend, who'd talk how great lua is and how difficult finding a language with no syntax problems is and how awful rust is until realizing how great the compiler error messages were and how great kevlin henney is, stopped coming online or messaging me a bit before you posted this. If that sounds like you, let's reconnect after you're done dealing with this mess. Email me at [my username without the underscore].contact@gmail.com and we'll work out a way to chat that doesn't risk opening you up to any of this, or whatever the much more helpful lainons say. (You know me; I don't know anything about computer security either lol).

Final report, I think it was Black Belt Google Fu. I spent the day trying to doxx myself and found a ridiculous amount of information. Pretty much all of my soykaf was vulnerable to advanced searches. Spent a huge chunk of time just wiping everything I could. I would bet money that's how she got me. Thanks for the advice everyone.

I want to hang out with your mom, she sounds cool as fock.

>>19840 please piss off the pinnacle of this world's evil next time so that we can justify going more crazy :D

>>19810 > long as I can remember. I am an adult and live on my She's a fed or hires an ex-fed to track you. Post about what a soykafty controlling human she is until she reads enough to understand to leave you alone. She wont, but will try to explain why her stalking is "good for you". Abusers always do. Buy her a high maintenance pet to keep her occupied instead.

>>19832 CIA grandpa is your roommate. https://help.twitter.com/en/safety-and-security/email-and-phone-discoverability-settings Would be the simplest explanation, check your privacy settings and never allow twitter to use your contact list.

>>19810 Your mom just need some good cock, where I can meet her?

>>21199 Too late Lain I'm omw to her

I keep separate e-mail accounts for work and personal stuff. And consider investing in a cheap or second hand document shredder, dumpster diving is the oldest trick in the book when looking for info.

>>21515 Document shredding always makes me remember one thing: In 1979 when the US embassy personnel left Iran in a hurry because of the islamic revolution, the Iranian authorities simply took a few hundreds of kids there and told them to make the shreds into original documents like a puzzle. They did it in a few days and they acquired every info from the embassy. I'm pretty sure nowadays there are automatized ways to do this with cameras and computer software.

>>19810 Have you confronted her in person about this? assuming you are a grown man you can most certainly stand your ground against her and worst-case scenario you file for a restraining order >>21520 >the Iranian authorities simply took a few hundreds of kids there and told them to make the shreds into original documents like a puzzle. kek its just like the "find the shiny" bit from futurama, not even intelligence agencies are free from good ol fashioned child labour