Posted on 04/07/2019 4:39:24 AM PDT by vannrox
Not sure where to put this one, it could go in so many different sub-forums, so I'll just put it here in 'General'.
The other day my laptop crashed and burned. Not sure what happened, but I think the motherboard fried. I managed to get it working enough to attach an external hard drive and mirror off all the data files. Most of it I already had backed up, but I just wanted to get the most recent data. Because many of my keyboard keys were not working I had to use some more global commands to get all the data. Last Sunday I went out and bought a new laptop. I wasn't too mad because my old laptop was 4+ years old and had given me pretty good service. I got the new laptop set up, installed all the software and copied all the data from my old laptop (now on my external HD) over to my new computer. Everything was working great, no problems.
So last night I was busy canning some spicy pickles and eggs and decided to listen to some music from my new machine. I clicked on my normal music directories and all these weird files showed up. At first I just ignored them thinking I would just go back and clean them out later. There were a bunch of them, hundreds even. I was searching for a particular song I wanted to listen to, but all these extraneous files kept getting in the way. What are these files???
The new files were .MP3 files and they had titles like 170901_1554. Always 6 digits with an underscore and then 4 more digits. Okay, so it's an .MP3 file, so let's play it and see what it is, right?
So, I played one of the files. ............ It's a recording of ME, in a conversation I was having with someone else. I hadn't recorded that conversation. So then I listened to a whole bunch of these files, and they were all recordings of conversations. Hundreds of conversations!! Me talking with my wife, me talking with a business colleague...even one of me talking to my dogs! Some of them were just 2-3 minutes long. Some of them were 45 minutes long. Hundreds and hundreds of recorded audio of conversations. WTF??? Like seriously...W...T...F??????
Now, I'm pretty computer saavy (lord knows, I work in the industry) so I'm pretty good about turning stuff off. When I set up a computer I spend hours turning off all the bloatware, all the recording and video. I'm kind of obsessive about turning off all the "big brother" stuff, and I frequently check to make sure updates don't add or turn something back on again. I run pretty damn good security on my machines too. That laptop was tight as a drum...or so I thought. Yet, there are hours and hours of conversations recorded on it. Probably hundreds of hours!!!! Absolutely unbelievable!
I have no idea what software recorded these files. I have no idea what triggered them to be recorded. I equally have no idea what or whom they were sent to. The good news is, there wasn't much of anything particularly notable in the recordings, but the simple fact they exist at all is a SERIOUS WTF moment!!!
Pretty scary!! Pretty scary that something like this could happen to someone like me, and it makes me wonder how much other EVIL-WARE is out there on other people's machines, recording everything they're doing!!
My laptop is a different story. I always keep something over the built in webcam and I've disabled the microphone. One can never be too careful anymore.
I just told you. You lift it up or turn your wrist. That tells it to pay attention. You dont want it randomly responding to people around you saying "Hey Siri" to their devices.
You are, for better or worse, a recognizable name here, and as people will find out in the coming years, there are forces which want control of online forums, making people like you a threat. They would much rather just their professionally paid, fully controlled voices controlled this forum.
If you ever track this down, what you will find is it is probably a “bug” of some other app. But the bug is simply how it is done, with deniability maintained. I personally would be shocked, with my knowledge and experience in the area, if someone wasn’t watching you to get an idea of what your deal is. And you won’t be the only one here. It is entirely possible there are the controlled voices here (often one person with four or five accounts at least), and the people being watched.
Just an FYI, to keep your nose clean so nobody can cause unfortunate events to overwhelm you and prevent you from having the spare time to post one day, if they decide they don’t like how you are affecting the narrative on this site.
Good luck.
Can you explain more about the Chinese “Mofia” following every foreigner once they get off the plane?
I have a personal interest in physical surveillance. I have seen personal accounts of people who were targets in other, western countries, who arrive in China and found surveillance teams waiting which seemed prepared based on the operations targeting them in the western countries.
It led me to believe although Chinese Intelligence might/would run follows on visiting foreigners, there may also be a broader, international network which operates in China, and may even have corrupted the Chinese government, or at least work with them in service to a greater organization behind the scenes.
It tends to snoop on you.
BFL
Control Voice: [opening narration] God looked upon his world and called it good. But man was not content. He looked for ways to make it better and built machines to do the work. But in vain we build the world, unless the builder also grows. - https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Outer_Limits_(1963_TV_series)
Yep, I misspelled mafia.
*They let themselves into your room(s) when ever you are away.
*They copied everything in his laptop.
*When dealing directly with a Chineese company, there will be a Political Officer in the group.
*He got caught in a Honey Trap (he was a horndog).
*There was blackmail and extortion.
Among other nifty safe and free apps, is autoruns (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns) which provides a very comprehensive list of programs that begin with Windows, and which you can choose to deselect. Usually.
On Saturday and Sunday, OANN ran a documentary, “Surveillance”, about exactly that. The beginning scene was from the ‘70s predicting what’s going on now. We DVRed it, but haven’t finished it because it’s so disturbing we can only watch in short segments.
Not necessarily. Putting the year up front makes for easier sorting by filename. I use that format all the time for date-stamped filenames.
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