Protection to my online accounts and to my PC

Hi,

My name speaks all, but not everything. I'm a computer engineer and I know I should know better this subject, but I don't.

My computer was apparently "trolled" by a friend/enemy. Some desktop icons which I care a lot, about 20 of them had just vanished; and I'm SURE my mother and my cats couldn't do it by accident because here is the complex path to achieve that goal:

The Complex path

1. Select the icons (they were contiguous, one side by side to the other)
2. Delete
3. Confirm deletion
4. Click the Recycle Bin
5. Choose Clean
6. Confirm cleaning

I REALLY don't think that it can be done by accident. I specifically asked my mother and my father and both confirmed that they did not executed The Complex Path. Unfortunately I could not ask my cats, they don't speak my verbal language.


SO.


Please help me.

I want to protect my computer (and online accounts) with all my strength.

Help me to achieve this please.


Best Regards,

NoobInSecurity

Did you kill the desktop icon cleanup?

couple of things;

yes check out the icon clean, and other profile stuff and make sure your profile is setup the way you want it to be.

now, to protect your computer well that's a huge subject so I am just going to throw out a few things. the rest, you can gain be read some of the back posts of this forum and others.

1) make sure your account is protected by a decent password, and is NOT an admin use a 2nd account for admin rights and make sure UAC is on MAX.

2) make sure your firewall is ON

3) make sure to have decent antivirus

4) make sure all software is always up to date.

5) make sure are you online accounts have strong passwords, and you have a strong email/password recovery that someone can not guess use lastpass or a password safe.

6) protect your critical data with trucrypt and keep it unmounted.

that should get you started, post more specific questions and we will help you.....

-GhostInShell