We don't use E-gold very often because our online merchant account handles most of our online business and customer sales. But every once in a while, someone will ask to pay us with E-gold, so we keep an account there. About once a month, we take the money out, and we decided to do that yesterday. When we logged into our E-gold account yesterday, we were shocked to see that our balance was a big fat 0. We had just looked at the balance a few days ago, so we knew this wasn't right. We looked into the account's history and found that money had been sent to another e-gold account user WITHOUT OUR KNOWLEDGE OR AUTHORIZATION. We had been hacked!
Since our computer has up-to-date virus protection and a firewall, we thought we were safe. Not so! This doesn't seem to be enough to keep hackers away, since the software doesn't stop "Spyware" from being put on your computer.
"Spyware" is software that is put on your computer and "spies" on what you do. Spying can be done in a variety of ways, from cookies that track you across multiple websites to "keystroke loggers" that record passwords, credit card numbers, and other personal information. The software then sends that information to the person who put it on your computer.
Spyware can get onto your computer in a number of ways.
First, it gets on your computer with software you download from the Internet and install.
Second, they come as attachments to emails, just like viruses, and when you open the email, they install themselves on your computer.
Third, hackers find an open port on your computer and use this "back door" to install almost anything they want.
And fourth, the more dangerous ones, like keystroke loggers, can be put on your computer by someone who has direct access to it, like an employer, a suspicious spouse, a business competitor, or someone who wants to know everything you do.
So, how can you keep yourself safe from these bad hackers? You need a programme that looks for the tens of thousands of spyware programmes already on your computer and the new ones that come out every day.
You might have spyware on your computer right now, so download one of the programmes from Google to protect yourself today.
As a point of reference, we told E-gold that we had been hacked. We gave them the account number of the person who got the money and asked for the person's email address so we could get in touch with them. E-gold told us they couldn't give us that information without a "court order" and that there was basically no way to get the money back.
Act now to keep yourself safe from this growing danger! In short: - Keep your anti-virus program up to date
- Put a firewall in place.
- Check out the software carefully before you install it.
- Do a weekly search for spyware.
- Stay up to date on this growing danger.
