Thursday, December 9, 2010

Keep Your Credit Cards Safe From Skimmers

This timely article is from PCWorld.com. It's kinda scary. There are very few good tips to prevent this criminal activity, so beware!

"Credit card skimming is a major threat to credit and debit card users. Here's what you need to know about this increasingly common form of financial fraud.

You're in a restaurant, enjoying a deep conversation. Peripherally, you see the waiter take your credit card and return a few minutes with a slip for you to sign. You think nothing of it until a few hours later when you receive a call from your bank: Someone is racking up serious debt on your credit card, mostly for electronics purchases. Is it you?

Skimming, a form of high-tech financial fraud, is on the rise worldwide. It relies on sophisticated data-reading electronics to copy the magnetic stripe information from your credit card or debit card. It can capture both your credit card number and your PIN. And it's happening not just at restaurants but at neighborhood gas pumps and ATM machines."

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Hard Drive Diagnostic Rogue Program

A customer from my VT past wrote to say that her system had been infected by what I think is a new rogue program called "Hard Drive Diagnostic". I had not heard of it before. I see the folks at bleepingcomputer.com have heard of it and , no surprise to me, they say that the fix for it is Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, the free program contained in my base security recommended list of (free) programs. 

Should you get bitten by this rogue, I would recommend you start your system in Safe Mode and run a full scan using Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware.