website guy changed my login and password. demands $$$

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 03 Jun 2016 Posts: 7

hello. hopefully this guy or guys arent seeing this post because I don't how much access he has now to my info now.

I'll try to make this story as short and to the point.

Due to my medical I'm trying to start a small work from home business.

Anyways,

At first I hired a web developer who built me a decent wordpress website.

Than after awhile taking Time off from this project. I hired another seo / advertising person to get my website running.

Paid him for 1 month to start doing seo. He installed bunch of plugins and updated other plugins.
After a month asks me to pay him to "fix up" the site because there are problems with it.
Paid him.
Don't know exactly what he did.
Website started getting spam comments and few things not working at all.

Tried calling him few times a week to talk about all this, than after about a week and a half finally I got hold of him.
He Told me that he will start charging me extra if I'll be calling him often.
this was the first shocker
after this, I asked him to fix the issues on my website, at least to make my website how it was before. and I won't bother him again.
he says there's no use on working or fixing this website because it wasn't done correctly at first and we should start completely new website.
I disagreed to this and asked again to fix the issues he did. he said he'll look over how much time it will take again.
later emailed me quote of few hours and few hundred dollars again.
I didn't respond for few days. later tried calling. couldn't get hold of him.
now this is where things got bad:
I got little frustrated with him and left him one star rating on Google.
later that day I get email that there was a sign in form my email at the city and state he's from.
( I was dumb enough to have same password for my email and Wordpress log in)
later same day I found out he changed rating for his business on Google using my google account to 5 stars.
than I quickly changed all my email passwords.
than went to login to my website and neither my email or password work.
I tried resetting password. but Wordpress didn't recognize my email anymore.
I emailed him asking for my login info and password.
he said he doesn't know and if I don't know there no way to log in to my website anymore.
but I got alittle smart and put his email for password reset. and it gave the "password reset emailed" message!!
I contacted him again and told him I put in his email and it should of sent him reset. he said he'll get back to me if gets the reset password email.
called me today that he can help me rest my password and account it will take him 6-10 hours and around $600.
and what made me believe that he has account log in to my website that he said that a lot of plugins are outdated, there are spam messages and comments, and he'll need time to take care of those as well.

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2016 9:21 am

Diderdyn,

Welcome to eater. As the guys and gals on this site will tell you, because he has your real life details, then you will have to make a very big choice but to drop him.

That said, there is a lot of baiters who will help you do what you are trying for.

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2016 10:09 am

Hi Didperdyn,

Welcome to Eater. I'm sorry you ran into this creep, but this is not what we do here. We deal with advanced fee fraud. You hired a "professional" who did not give you the service for which you contracted.

Is here any consumer complaint entity in your area? You may get some resolution through those channels. Otherwise, your best option might be to hire a reputable website professional to fix the problems once and for all. I would not attempt any secure transactions on your lap top.

Good luck.

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2016 10:58 am

Well he went too far, but as a programmer I can see his side as well, clients wanting extra free work hours after the work is delivered for "just this one change".

You wouldn't tell a taxi driver that here, thanks for the ride, here's the money, now would you go and pick up my nephew for free.

EDIT:
also wordpress is garbage, and there are tons of automated hackbots running around, get a dedicated website done.

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2016 8:01 pm

^Where did it say that the OP was demanding extra work for free?

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 03 Jun 2016 Posts: 7

Uno Nisu wrote:

Well he went too far, but as a programmer I can see his side as well, clients wanting extra free work hours after the work is delivered for "just this one change".

You wouldn't tell a taxi driver that here, thanks for the ride, here's the money, now would you go and pick up my nephew for free.

EDIT:
also wordpress is garbage, and there are tons of automated hackbots running around, get a dedicated website done.

What "extra free work hours" are you talking about ?

those hours he spent changing passwords to my site ?

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 03 Jun 2016 Posts: 7

Spent most of the day today reading how-to's and managed to reset my password thru hosting website.

Feeling somehow relieved for now.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 03 Jun 2016 Posts: 7

Capone wrote:

Hi Didperdyn,

Welcome to Eater. I'm sorry you ran into this creep, but this is not what we do here. We deal with advanced fee fraud. You hired a "professional" who did not give you the service for which you contracted.

Is here any consumer complaint entity in your area? You may get some resolution through those channels. Otherwise, your best option might be to hire a reputable website professional to fix the problems once and for all. I would not attempt any secure transactions on your lap top.

Good luck.

Thank you.

Don't know any complaint entities around here.

Honestly I'm afraid reporting him because he'll fire back again by hacking my another who knows what.

Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2016 5:29 am

Hi Didperdyn. Welcome to Eater.

You've made your post in Eater's Scambaiting Help, Hints and Tips forum, so it is out of place.

You may get more feedback, from our members, if you ask a Moderator to move your post to Eater's General Chat forum.

You can do this by clicking on the 'Report this post to a moderator' link, in the bottom right hand of your current post, and ask that it be moved to General.

Good luck with your site.

Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 5:45 pm

The first thing you could do is check whose registrant details are given at 'whois' if you could post the website name here we can check it for you. Most hosters have a clause which allows the registered owner of the site to regain access to the site, I've done this for someone before.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 03 Jun 2016 Posts: 7

thank you all. after reading lots of Wordpress support forums. figured out how to change password and email back to mine in the hosting site.

I deleted all users and only set my email for admin. and changed passwords.

hopefully everything is safe now.

but obviously he's a good hacker, what if he has my new email and website login passwords ?

Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 9:18 pm

^^ this is an excellent question, and the answer is of benefit to all: grab yourself a good password generator plus a secure password keeping system (I personally like KeePass) and change everything. Don't leave anything up to chance. Honestly, in that sense, the guy is doing you a favor - he's giving you motivation & a good reason to secure your personal access to your most important stuff.

Set a reminder on your calendar for 6 months from now, and do it again, because if someone gets hold of your password again and they aren't quite so obvious about it, they can do some REAL damage. Thankfully, this guy was like a bull in a china shop and you figured it out quickly. And if you and your wife are sharing the same password, you're putting her at risk (or vice versa).

Passwords and underwear are similar: they should be mysterious, personal (not shared with friends or strangers), long enough to cover pretty much everything, difficult to get into (yeah, I know JC is going to argue with me on this one), and changed often.

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

Kitty La Gore wrote:

(yeah, I know JC is going to argue with me on this one.

In his defense, his HMO will not cover DNA tests.

Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 10:35 pm

Didperdyn wrote:

but obviously he's a good hacker, what if he has my new email and website login passwords ?

Just a thought maybe he has found a way to install a key logger on your pc, if he has it doesn’t matter how many times you change your password.

Worth doing a check to see if you have a key logger on your pc.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 03 Jun 2016 Posts: 7

Removed unnecessary quote of previous post - bware419ers

how do I check for that ?

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2016 1:59 am

Regarding a keylogger

Have a look at this

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-security/how-to-detect-if-a-keylogger-is-installed/d14c6cd6-6975-4b25-a2c5-17e5de194b50

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2016 4:43 am

Right, I'll chip in with my 2 centd worth.

In my opinion, from the information you have given us, this doesn't seem as a work of a skilled hacker, rather just some guy who got lucky with trying your password out - because you used the same passwords. However, now that he's been in your email, I'd definitely change the passwords, here's few tips.

Use password manager/keychain. It's a software that generates you random, strong passwords, different for every website and stores them (in encrypted form) so you don't have to remember all those passwords. You remember just one password - the one that unlocks the password manager and it automatically fills in the password on this or that website.

Most email providers have "activity log" - what it is - basically it shows you the list of the last couple of computers/people accessing your email, along with IP address - and where it is approximately located. If he's from a different state, if he has access to your email, you would definitely see some suspicious activity there. I recommend checking it once in a while, monitor this activity.

Use secondary verification - again, depending on your email provider/services you use. Gmail, for example, offers verification by text message. So even if I told you my password, if you try to login from different computer that mine, it would send me a PIN code to my phone than you'd have to enter. It shuts most hackers down, right out of the bat. They can know my password, but they can't read text messages I get.

A good antivirus software can help you check for keyloggers, although - like I said, in my opinion, having those installed doesn't seem like that much of a threat. Password managers usually help against keyloggers as well - you enter password only to access the pw manager itself, so they can't log passwords you enter into email.

So - to sum up - with password manager, different passwords everywhere, good antivirus software, secondary verification where available and monitoring suspicious activity, you should be as safe as it gets in terms of computer security.

I would be more concerned about the website though, if he had access to it - he could have injected some malicious files to the website itself, I would definitely do the WordPress thing anew - basically delete all the files from the website and start fresh. This is more likely than him having direct access to your computer.

If you need help with any of these things, I am willing to help you with anything you need.

Master Baiter Joined: 24 Feb 2016 Posts: 206

Depending upon where you are based, you may want to consider reporting him to the relevant law enforcement agency.

If he has accessed your email and/or Google account without your permission, he has possibly put himself in legal peril.

Have a look at this

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/10/31/how-to-report-a-computer-crime-unauthorised-email-account-access/

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 03 Jun 2016 Posts: 7

more bad news.

I still haven't tried keylogger scanner.

today tried to go my website and it doesn't load at all just gives blank page and "Error establishing a database connection".

GoldenOldie wrote:

Depending upon where you are based, you may want to consider reporting him to the relevant law enforcement agency.

If he has accessed your email and/or Google account without your permission, he has possibly put himself in legal peril.

Have a look at this

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/10/31/how-to-report-a-computer-crime-unauthorised-email-account-access/

thank you.
I live in Massachusetts USA.
will look into that.

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