Really freaked out by something that just happened with my laptop, please can anybody explain it?

[Spookylaptop]

We have had our laptop for about five years but have not used it much at all over four or so. I've just started using it again as started postgraduate study.

I was logged into an account to watch video lectures earlier, had been logged into main desktop for a while. I changed the screen size on the video and it took a moment to load, and at that point for a second I'm sure I saw what looked like someone else's desktop, with a darker background to our's and with loads more icons (we only have a few). It looked like a cursor going to open an icon.

It was so quick I feel like I could have imagined it, except I think this happened the other day too and I just dismissed it.

This image is not part of any of the videos (I watched through to check) and it's not part of the account background.

What on earth has happened?

I'm so freaked out I'm thinking of getting a different cheap laptop, which we had talked about anyway as this one is very slow. However, I have posted on mumsnet in the past about something I had blown up in my mind as being some malicious scam when it was really just an everyday innocent occurrence so I'm hoping someone will explain it!

@lilcolibri I'm sure you are right, and I'm tempted to just carry on with it now as rationally I can't imagine how I'd see a supposed hacker's own screen, even if they made a mistake, but I just can't figure out why I can't see the image again on the video. It was recorded specifically for viewing in this way and was never part of a live session, for example.

I'm hoping someone techy can explain the encoding thing and put my mind at rest!

Just a little bump before I get the laptop out of the cupboard 😂

I'm with @Hawkins001; it sounds like an encoding error. It'd take a REALLY dumb hacker to broadcast their screen to yours! They'd never want to make that connection.

I know you said you've got antivirus software but it's not all made even - when you've got an hour or so that you don't need the laptop for, try running the free version of Malwarebytes, to double-check everything is secure.

But it's very likely to be that there's a glitch where the multiple lecture views intertwine, and that's why you saw it briefly when you changed video size, as Hawkins said. The uploader wouldn't necessarily have seen it when uploading, so they haven't "forgotten" to remove it from the uploaded presentation - they've probably just set the primary video to not show the desktop, and it's glitched as you've changed the settings.

Thank you, I feel reassured now! That is more sensible, but it did freak me out at the time in the dark. I'm not sure why anyone would want to hack me anyway, I'm very boring and do all things like ordering, online banking etc on my phone

Sometimes when you’re leaving Zoom or sharing your screen the display format settings flicks from one settings to another - possible that your own screen would look unfamiliar in that way for a split second.