Fast forward to about a year ago, he gets put in jail for stealing CC #'s from the restaurants machines and gets charged with embezzlement and some sort of hacking charges.
Now, my mother and I have not lived with him for 2 years or so. About 5-7 months ago, she decides to purchase a new Dell laptop. Everything works great at first, until up to about 3-4 months ago. She began to think people are hacking into her computer, that someone had put up all fake Dell websites when her programs hot linked to their website (what made her think they were phished? The bottom of some company pages would say copyright 200x or 2010, when it was 2011), began to notice programs that she didn't install (except she did, but didn't un-check the boxes while installing another program, so automatically she assumes its a hacker).
Whenever something would 'change' or something 'looked different' or some feature wasn't working (such as wireless internet, webcam, etc...) a hacker was to blame. Now, I consider myself very knowledgeable in computer basics... but you know how other people think your some amazing computer whiz just because you know how to do simple networking but in reality it's them who know absolutely nothing? Yeah, frustrating.
Meanwhile, I genuinely look over every one of these claims and spend countless hours checking her computer for problems that didn't exist, run multiple virus scans with programs such as AVG, Malwarebytes, Spybot S&D, and Norton. When something DID come up in the scans, it was always ad-ware or cookies something silly like that. She still wasn't happy, so I told her to order restore CD's and that would erase everything on her computer and bring it back to factory settings. She was really happy for about a month there until her computer was getting way over cluttered with links, shortcuts, programs, and just a very messy unorganized computer. Right about this time, the old claims of problems would raise again, and apparently one day Google deleted her GMail account.
Oh god did I hear about this for weeks about how we're being watched and someones in her computer, stealing her info, passwords, stalking her, etc. Note, I'm still doing weekly virus scans every once in a while at this point.
Eventually, I got very tired of hearing about imaginary people hacking her computer and told her I cannot look over her computer anymore, it has to end, I was being driven crazy and this is all she talked/thought about all day. She got pissed and took it to a computer professional who apparently didn't have time to look over it that day but would look over it next time for her for free (guess who never went back?). At this point she was convinced all of her info was compromised and 'they' were into everything (she doesn't even use online banking or put in debit info online to begin with). Next round up she phones the police saying somebody's hacking into her computer, and they never followed up on that (it's been a month or two).
Guess who the next scapegoat is? Me, yes me. One day 2 weeks ago a key-logger was found during one of her virus scans. She brings it to me and I say yes, your right somebody is hacking you. I tell her to just delete it and change all of her passwords after that's done and a reboot. She now yells at me with profanity, calling me all sorts of names, starts crying, threatening me... I try my best to ignore her, until she accuses me of putting a key-logger on her computer and now I'm the hacker.
Honestly, I've been trying very hard to stay away from her computer and her issues. Now I'm being accused and treated like [bleep], yelled at every day, called an [bleep], [bleep], piece of [bleep], basically just looked down on like dirt. All I've ever done was try to help my mom, but now I've turned into this persona of her abusive ex-husband.
A couple of days ago, her computer black screened with fatal errors -- karma, karma karma... -- and of course I'm to blame because apparently I put a virus/spyware on her computer that made this happen .I wasn't even home the week this happened, I was away at my grandmothers for a while. Now I'm back at my moms house and she's actually starting to make me feel like I'm some evil son of a [bleep] even though I've not done one thing to her laptop... I wouldn't even know where to start with making or sending a virus and would never do that anyone anyway, I'm a very honest person; it can't be helped though I guess.
I offer to fix her computer but she won't even let me look at it or fix it in front of her because she doesn't trust me.
Can someone help me here? I'm tired of being treated like [bleep] every day and don't know how I can prove my innocence and just go on with day to day life without hearing about her computer.