My computer got hacked

and the  road to full recovery has been long and tortuous. 

I have been able to use it right along but, once I was made aware of what had happened and the purpose for which it had been used, I have been even more cautious than usual.

I don't do things like internet banking. I do use PayPal but the card I use for that has a very limited amount of money on it. I use the internet for email, contact with friends overseas on "social media", and searching for information. I don't play games or go into "chat rooms" on dubious sites. 

No, it wasn't any of that. The person who arranged to have me hacked is someone who, for some reason best known to themselves, has decided they dislike me intensely. Her grandson did the hacking. With the story she spun him  he didn't even understand exactly what it was she was going to do. He was a mere ten years old when he managed to do it. How he did it is still a mystery. It was as much of a mystery to him as it was to everyone else. He was "just playing around" and "I didn't think I'd actually done it". He couldn't work out how he had done it and, for six years, it remained like that. His grandmother didn't use this to her advantage very often but use  it she did. She used it maliciously and she has caused immense damage - not just to me but to a lot of other people as well.

Fortunately, if there is anything fortunate about the whole affair, she did not interfere with my work files. It is unlikely that she could actually have accessed those. She did have access to my personal files. For the most part I think they would have made pretty dull reading but it still felt as if I had been burgled. She used it to send emails that were made to look as if they had come from me. She intercepted mail and much more. I won't go into details.

This woman is not a criminal. She is clever. She knows what she has done but she is not a criminal. She is mentally ill. Not only has she harmed me but she has harmed her family as well. One marriage is in danger of breaking down completely. Her grandson, the boy she used to do this, won't talk to her now he realises what she really wanted. 

It has taken several months of work by the boy, his father, one of his father's work colleagues and another man to sort the problem out. The process was complicated by actions which were taken with the best of intentions. 

I don't understand how it was done or how it was fixed but I hope it really has been fixed now...and I changed all my passwords again yesterday!