Internet activity accessed by flatmates- how?

[jeezlouise]

Recently my internet activity has been accessed by a flatmate of mine. Whatever software was used required both my laptop to be on and close proximity to work, as he would enter the room adjacent to mine (despite that room not being his) shortly after I entered my own room on several occasions. Therefore my question is what software requires both the target laptop to be on and close proximity? Thank you.

[DaveLembke]

? Have you run any virus scans and come up with any troubles ?

There are too many programs out there to list that would fly under the radar of an antivirus, but require the other person to have physical access to your computer to install a service. Did they ever send you anything to install or run, or have they ever had access to your system in an accessible mode to install a service such as if your computer is left unattended and logged on?

Most simplistic fix if you cant target to remove the software or service would be to back up your data to an external drive and restore the computer back to factory default. Then be sure to set a password on the system and a screen saver with a lock to lock the computer after say 5 minutes of inactivity. This might be a pain as for if you walk away to get coffee and more than 5 minutes pass you need to enter your password to get back to whatever you were working on, but its the most secure method with a questionable flatmate causing troubles.

Additionally they might not have anything installed on your system at all and are just sniffing the wireless with a tool that watches packets. They can see traffic to and from your devices and know where you have been based on IPs and any unencrypted data transferred in packets. So if this is the case, you will want to lock them out of your wireless network if they are on it. This is a wireless router config change.

Lastly how do you know they accessed your internet activity, are they sharing information as a threat or something else that gave you hints that they are snooping in your private activities?

[jeezlouise]

I've run several virus scans and nothing (to my mind) of any significance has cropped up; up until I suspected that something was up my laptop did not have a password so I guess all sorts of programs could have been installed. It's complicated as to why I know this has been done, but rest assured I know it has been. Do you know of any programs that require proximity?

[DaveLembke]

Do you know of any programs that require proximity?

Every program or service that uses bluetooth or wifi has to stay within a proximity/operating range .... that doesnt help much because too many to guess you have installed & list. Have you looked for any programs or services that look questionable.

You can run Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Product | Select-Object -Property Name > C:\Software\PCapps.txt as seen here to gather a list and share it with us to look at:
http://www.howtogeek.com/165293/how-to-get-a-list-of-software-installed-on-your-pc-with-a-single-command/

Then attach the txt file for us to look at after running that instruction from command shell. You can also take a screen shot of task manager and sort alphabetically and "show processes from all users" selected so we can look for questionable services. Although the best hackers will hide rogue services under like names of legit services to mask them from easy capture.

Your best bet really is to backup your data and wipe it clean back to factory install and start fresh, and keep it secure with password and no physical access by them. A simple thumb drive or disc can bypass computer security with hacksaw tools that run in Linux that can alter hard drive contents to plant things. When bringing your data back to the computer make sure you have antivirus with realtime protection and latest definitions running and fully scan it before opening any files or running any backed up programs.