Happy Christmas and Goodwill to all men?........

[Green Aura]

Bloody hell Susie - someone's going to have a good Christmas, at your expense!!!

It's scary how much info people can actually nab.

We stopped using AVG about a year ago - OH feared it wasn't quite up to the mark. I now use avast and OH has just started using Avira antivir.

Oh says it depends how they got your info. Try using a malware scanner too - slightly different emphasis to a virus checker. Malware Bytes anti malware.

I know it's closing the stable door.... but I hope it's of some help.

[MKG]

Sorry to hear that, Susie.

GA's right - anti-virus software (I use Avast, too, and it's excellent) will catch a lot of things - but it won't catch other stuff coming in. Unless you block everything (which gets rid of emails and all of the internet, so what's the point?) things which aren't actually viruses can take up residence. One of those things is called a key-logger, and it sounds like you've had one (and probably still have it!!!!!). Those sit there reading your key presses and then sending them to god knows where - so if you enter your bank details at any time, it's a gift for the wrong people. The most common source is junk email - don't open any.

You need scanners for adware and malware. One good one comes with Mozilla Firefox (so get rid of Internet Explorer, if you're still using it). Best of all, though, is NEVER EVER store your bank details anywhere on your computer, and avoid as much as possible ever typing those same details in at the keyboard.

Richie's also correct. If it's at all possible, change over to a Linux system (they come in all sorts of flavours). Linux won't be immune for ever but, at the moment, very few people are writing nasties to attack it. However, do your homework first - installing Linux is not always so simple as its fans sometimes suggest.

Mike

EDIT: Of course, the information may not have come from your computer at all - have you been using your card in any new places recently?

[Carltonian Man]

So sorry to hear about that Susie. It's absolutely sickening.
I also changed from AVG to Avast (free version) and find it works really well.
Just as a point worth mentioning, Windows XP firewall doesn't stop outbound traffic. I used to run Zone Alarm from zonelabs.
Now I'm on Vista, the firewall stops only some outbound traffic and is very difficult to configure. I find this firewall manager works well from Sphinx and is very easy to set up
http://www.bestfreewaredownload.com/a-s ... eware.html It allows easy control of the Windows firewall for all in and outbound traffic and notifies you if anything tries to get through unauthorised. It's a free download and there's also a version for Windows 7.

Regards
Martin

[Milims]

I don't know anything about the techy side so I'm sending you a Some peple are just so mean!

[Mal]

Google Chrome is worth a look as well - I'm just trying it out myself and it's got a nice simple interface.

Have to admit, I'm on Linux myself [edit: OpenSuse Linux is the particular flavour], but Mrs Mal is determinedly on Windows so we're dual booting our machine. I've currently got Norton running on the Windows side but I'll try a free one when it expires (assuming I can't get her to try Mint Linux or something!)

[MKG]

Just as a matter of interest ...

This topic led me to do another scan using the Firefox anti-spyware program, which I last did early this morning. In that time, I'd had another three tracking cookies installed on my machine - now gone to the great cookie dump in the sky. They're relatively harmless, but it just shows you how easy it is for stuff to get in.

Mike

[Gert]

You have my sympathy

[spitfire]

sick to my stomach hearing the news of your online theft, there are some people, "and i use the term in the broadest sense," that if there is a god, will hopefully get there just desserts. in the mean time, good people get shafted!!!! may the culprits inherit a thousand room mansion and be found dead in every one of them. you have my support and sympathy,

[StripyPixieSocks]

We had the same thing happen to us a couple of weeks ago although for a far smaller sum but our bank spotted it as one of those 'lets see if the account is active before we withdraw all the money' kind of things and blocked everything.

Very kind of the bank not to tell us (for almost a week) until we had filled up our car with petrol that our cards wouldn't work

We had to get a slip of the petrol station to say we'd pay in 24 hours then drove home to have a few words with our bank to let us take out some cash and then block the card again.

It seems to be happening more and more lately, you will get your money back and I hope they re-pay it swiftly... so much for chip and pin being much safer eh?

Usually in London it's garages staffed with people specifically to grab your details and send it back to Morocco or some such place... in future we're using cash and will only withdraw money from a bank... it's too unsafe these days to pay with a card or even draw money out of a hole in the wall.

[Carltonian Man]

Just remembered... you're probably already aware but anyone else who's using Internet Explorer may wish to check this. Go to Tools, Internet Options, Advanced, then scroll down to the security section and tick Do Not Save Encrypted Pages To Disk.
Why on earth microsoft don't tick this as default is beyond me. Left unticked, all those pages you visit that have the secure padlock symbol are saved to temp files. Bogey programmes target the temp files, find your details and, well, bad news all round.

[red]

its a horrible feeling - dont let them get you down... battle with the banks instead

[indy]

I had this happen to me also 2 weeks ago, must say the mattress idea seems very appealing at the moment...it is also of no comfort when one finds oneself stuck in the bank for two hours being made to feel like a criminal!! Sympathies

[Millymollymandy]

I've just done that too although I don't have a clue what that means, or secure padlock systems I don't even visit my UK online bank unless I have a credit card bill to pay which is about twice a year! It's so much faff with all the passwords and questions these days (that are so complex that I HAVE to write them down - so bloody stupid!!! ) that's why I don't bother logging in.

[gigglybug]

How awful!!

[Flo]

[urlhttp://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/]Download and run Ccleaner[/url] which will easily move lots of the stuff that you collect when using the internet. Use the last option to wipe clean space once in the blue moon. Gets rid of cookies and temporary files. Never save passwords anywhere.