Long story short, I have a repeat hacker. tl;dr version, he's the ex of a girl I know who doesn't think she should have a life, so he has nothing better to do with his than toast all her friends' computers periodically. Aaaanyway....

I have two antivirus programs, but he still occasionally worms his way in. He's toasted my roomie's laptop, and he crashed my PC twice which, altho it wasn't permanently damaged, meant I had to wait til friends could repair it, and I lost a lot of personal files both times. What can allow me to surf completely without being followed around, and what can encrypt all my passwords and past pages and all so soundly he won't be able to get anything out of it if he does get in? I had to change my bank card twice because he stole money via my Paypal one time, and now I'm afraid to shop online lest he rip me off again.

Before you suggest I get him busted, this kinda crime is more prevalent than most ppl think and the local cops don't think they can do anything. He doesn't even live in the same state as me, and his ex (my friend) said he uses cheap disposable laptops anyway, so if he had a heads up someone was after him he'd just chuck his own computer away and get a new one.

He seems hella crazy so i can't see this ending anytime too soon, so I'd rather just encryptify myself to the gills if possible.

I would get a spyware sweeper(Web Root is a good one) because I think he is using a keylogger. Best thing is to not tell his ex you installed it or buy it online.If possible I would even install it while your offline and then perform a complete sweep afterwards. Then have run in the background while you are online and perform a daily sweep while you sleep.

Personally, I would get rid of one of your anti-virus programs. Having more than one can cause them to start conflicting with each other and reduce performance on your machine. Like Kasumi said, get a spyware program or two instead (I like Malwarebytes, and I've heard good things about SuperAntiSpyware), keep them updated, and run them regularly.

I found this to be an interesting read, as well. It may have some information that could help you.

That article also has a story or two of people who have successfully tracked down and reported their hackers. You could try to do the same, since your local police department isn't helping. Since you know who he is, you can file a report with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (assuming you're in the United States). If you're able to find his ISP, you can also file a report with them.

Good luck to you and your friends, and I hope you're able to stop him.

I'll try them. His ex (my friend) might have a good idea where he is right now, but eventually he will move and then he'll be hard to find. His IP probably isn't findable tho as he's probably using proxies and as said, is known to ditch computers anyway when he thinks people are on to him (he used to do this when they were going together so he could steal money to support his drug habit- part of why she ditched him).

I'll check out some of those progs and maybe ditch the antiv I got that was free. The other one came with something and is one of the big names- I'm not looking right at it but I think it is Norton? I kinda want to get anonymiser suite also because then MY IP is also changing so if he latched on all I'd have to do is change to another.

A dynamic IP is a good thing. Also you might get a good firewall.