hi, im after some advice about how to stop hackers getting hold of my passwords whilst i am online.a few months ago someone got hold of my credit card details. then today my daughter was on yahoo messenger chatting to some friends when some guy just messages her, she told him where to go, and he just said " right you id is mine " he then told her what her password is, and before she could do anything, he had changed her password and locked her out. how the hell did he get her password, and is there anything i can do to protect my computer better. i have a firewall, anti spyware and anti-virus

Keep the kiddes off the machine and also be sure the online bussiness you use have a secure method of handling private info, not all do...

Keep the old stuff running

i only use secure websites. it seems a bit harsh to stop them using the computer. im just curious as to how they got the password for messenger.

There is no easy answer. I'd start with your kid. How old is she?

i_XpUser

For usernames/passwords you could try this program 'Arovax TraySafe' - http://www.traysafe.com/

For anti-phishing there's these good freebies.

SiteHound - http://www.firetrust.com/

SiteAdvisor - http://www.siteadvisor.com/

The new version of 'Firefox Browser' 2.0 have very good Anti-phishing built in.

And since your daughter user Messengers, i would highly recommend this freebie also 'BufferZone' - http://www.trustware.com/freeware.php

There is a free version for Browsers, P2P File Sharing and Messenger Clients. I'm currently beta testing the full Home Version and will definitely not part with it!.

No telling how the hacker did it. If I was that smart I'd be rich.

Probably a REAL good idea to lose the chat rooms, AOL, MSN and related crap.

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If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

When running these types of programs in 'BufferZone, access to folder(s) that contain sensitive info such as 'My Documents' is completely restricted and invisible to anything in the Bufferzone.

ive installed bufferzone, having a few teething problems with it though. everytime i open up internet explorer i get a message saying no internet connection is available. and gives a chose of working offline or trying again, it works ok if i click try again. but thats going to get really annoying after a while. also i cant strean anything through media player.

This product is in continuing development and there are some bugs/issues even conflicts with certain programs that they are in the process of straightening out. What i would do if interested, is have a look through their forum and see if that helps and if not, post your issues there and hopefully they will get sorted. That's if you have some patience to purse this. Up to you.

Here's a link to their forum - http://www.trustware.com/forum/