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Are You Safe from Hackers? |
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We don't use E-gold
very often since most of our online business and customer sales
are conducted through our online merchant account. However,
we occasionally have someone who will request paying by E-gold
so we keep an account there for this reason. Once a month or
so we withdraw the funds and decided to do so yesterday. Imagine
our dismay when we logged into our E-gold account yesterday
and found our balance to be a big fat ZERO! We had checked the
balance just a few days ago so we knew this was not correct.
After investigating the history of the account, we found that
a spend had been made to another e-gold account user WITHOUT
our knowledge or authorization. We had been hacked!
Since we have up to date anti-virus and firewall software
on our computer, we assumed we were safe. Not so! It seems
this is not enough to keep away the hackers as the software
does not prevent "Spyware" from being installed
on your computer.
"Spyware" is software that gets onto your computer
and literally "spies" on your activities. The spying
can range from relatively harmless use of cookies tracking
you across multiple websites... to extremely dangerous "keystroke
loggers" which record passwords, credit cards, and other
personal data. That data then gets relayed to the person who
put the software on your computer.
Spyware gets on your computer in one of several different
ways.
First, it rides along with software you download from the
'Net and install on your system.
Second, they come as email attachments (much like viruses)
and automatically install themselves on your computer when
you open the email message.
Third, hackers find an open port on your computer and use
the "back door" to install basically anything they
want.
And fourth, the more malicious types, like keystroke loggers,
can even get installed by someone with direct physical access
to your computer such as an employer, suspicious spouse, business
competitor, or someone who wants to know exactly what you're
doing.
So how do you protect yourself against these malicious hackers?
You need a program that specifically scans your system for
the tens-of-thousands of existing spyware programs along with
the new ones appearing daily.
Below are two programs which specifically check for and remove
spyware from your system:
"Spybot Search & Destroy" - www.safer-networking.org
"Ad Aware" - www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/
You may have spyware lurking on your computer right now so
protect yourself today by downloading one of the above programs!
As a point of reference, we contacted E-gold and informed
them that we had been hacked. We provided them with the account
number of the person who received the funds and asked for
a contact e-mail address on the person. E-gold informed us
that they could not provide that information without a "court
order" and that basically there was no way of getting
the money back!
Take action today to protect yourself from this growing threat!
The bottom line is: - Keep your anti-virus program current
- Install a firewall
- Carefully screen software before installing it
- Scan specifically for spyware weekly
- Stay current on this growing threat.
About the Author:
Charles & Susan Truett are experienced internet marketers
who have built a successful online business and are now
teaching others how to achieve the same success. For more
information on how to make money at home visit:
www.partnersinsuccess.net
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