computer fraud

[old tree man]

Thought i had better let you, know my sister brought a book on amazon and subsequently through the transaction her card details were copied and an amount of money was taken out of her account, now no one is pointing any fingers but this is what scares me about internet transactions and how easy these people can hack into your private lives.
So please be careful when buying stuff online no matter how safe they say it is, it just isn't !!.
all the best
Russ

[Martin]

it's one of the many reasons I'm using Ubuntu - a free Linux operating system (instead of Windoze), it's intrinsically far safer!

[MKG]

Russ - it's hughly unlikely that it had anything to do with Amazon. However, your sister may have a resident rogue cookie or some other bit of spyware. Tell her to do a complete scan with dedicated anti-spyware software (anti-virus stuff doesn't catch it) to check that the culprit isn't her own computer. Spyware Doctor is freely downloadable.

Also - rule No. 1 - never ever put your personal details onto your computer, no matter how much idiots tell you that it's convenient and safe.
Commiserations to your sis.

[mrsflibble]

AVG do a free spyware scan and rootkit cleaner too.
so far it's workin well on my comp.

[thecornflake]

I work in IT and I've found regular scanning with Spybot (free) and using the immunize option together with AVG anti virus and either Sygate or Zonealarm firewalls seems the best option (all of these are free).

Also another free one called CCleaner (short for Crap Cleaner!) is good for removing cookies etc. I run this at the end of every browsing session before i shut down.