How Can You Tell If You Have A “Russian” Hacker?
In 2014 my Twitter account became full of peculiar tweets in a foreign language that I did NOT write!
I put some of these tweets into Google Translator http://translate.google.com
They appeared to be “Russian”, but the content of the few I read did not seem to be anything but harmless advertisements.
In the summer of 2015 I went to a lot of yard sales and got some DVDs and paperback books with spy story lines.
Apparently, something that seems harmless and ordinary might contain secret hidden meaning!
In 2016 I was a perennial political candidate again, and I notified Will Senning who is the attorney for the Vermont Secretary of State Elections Division that I seemed to have “Russian” hackers going through my e-mail to my Twitter account.
I did not want to give koodies or bugs to the state, and the e-mail I used to contact the Elections Division was the same e-mail on that Twitter account.
I have since changed the name of that account to CrisEricson2018 and I also have another account with a different e-mail address that has NOT been hacked.
I checked my files for my e-mail account today. I kept a separate e-mail file in the account for the 2016 political campaign, but it was empty today. I might have deleted everything a few months after the election, not thinking
that “Russia” would be any big deal, once Donald Trump was sworn into office; but I don’t recall.
Maybe the file contents just disappeared; I wanted to find the date I sent an e-mail about this to Will Senning.
Apparently, “Russian” hacking is still in the news.
Here is some of what is left in my Twitter account, but also please remember, that even though these tweets (which I did NOT write!) appear to be “Russian”, ANY HACKER
could have written them in any language and then put them in Google Translator and changed the language!
So, if anyone can use a Google Translator and change the language they are writing in, or receiving messages or other script in, then HOW can you tell who is really “Russian”?
Please note: at the time I was hacked, this account did not have the 2018 after my name.
[NOTE: Spam links included in this story removed by moderators]
Hacking is different than spam.
Spam is when people put links into messages trying to trick you into clicking and downloading something, usually malware but sometimes to gain traffic and get ad hits.
Hacking is a person who has gained access to your computer and is able to control it.
Everyone gets unexpected and unwanted messages in social media. Spammers impersonate real people, try to get you to follow them, and subscribe to your feeds. Other people can forward their to you, and companies can pay to get in your face.
The links you put in the article are regular bit.ly shortened URL’s that do seem to link to russian or ukrainian sites. But, as you point out, anyone can send a link. It could;d be a next door neighbor, or someone just trying to freak you out if they know you get worried about these things.
Twitter has abuse reporting options. You can block or mute those sending you this. You can also report them to Twitter.
Hi! Cgrotke, what I’m complaining about is that the tweets,
what you refer to as links, were NOT sent TO me,
they appear to be sent BY me,
so someone appears to have hacked into my account
and used my account to send those tweets out.
Each one you refer to as a “link” is a tweet that
was sent out by my account, so I still think I was hacked.