re:stolen credit card number

Typically, as long as you use a secure site, you should be fine, BUT some sites have been hacked into or had someone who worked there physically steal the information. I have heard of both. For the most part, using your card online is not all that different from using it at a store, or on a phone. Theres no guarantee that pimply kid who checked you out didnt remember or write the number down to use it himself later.

Someone recently tried to use my card. My bank guesses someone, somehow, got the basic first set of numbers and from there was charging small amounts, with various numbers, to test the card to see if it worked. Apparently, once thats done, they usually start charging large amounts. My VISA spotted the small charges, recognized it as an attempt to find good CC numbers and shut my card off and sent me a new one within a few days.

Make sure your credit card company will back you up in a case like this (sounds like they are) because really, having a company who will stand behind you and help track these people down as well as avoid it happening at all, like in my case, is what you also should be concerned about.

 

P.S Jabman makes a good point too, NEVER buy anything from an email link, theres no guarantee that its not a scam. If Paypal, Ebay, or whatever emails you, go to their website yourself by typing it in, so your sure.

 

Ok, here we go. I just got done running Spybot and Ad-aware actually...

Ad-Aware is a bit more user friendly and everything it finds can be deleted. Its very safe and a good bet if your not sure. Thats why its so popular.

Spybot is an excellent program, but not quite as friendly although it generally tags the safe to delete items and leaves items that might be questionable unchecked. This helps a lot to avoid mistakingly deleting wrong items. Im not sure where you saw it could ruin your system, but beware of anonymous reviews, sometimes people have an agenda or a problem that they pass blame off on a program. Stupidity is not the fault of any one program. You obviously have the intelligence to ask before you get click happy, so you will be ok. Bottom line, Spybot is excellent as well. IMHO, Spybot and Ad-Aware are equally good.

Hijack this is NOT for the average computer user and there are other browser hijacking tools in our spyware section that are more friendly. Take a browse through there. As for the log file, we can probaly help you here, but simply put, people regulalry post logs at http://www.wilderssecurity.com/index.php and you can either post your log there, or simply read some to see what is safe and what is not.