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Editor: Matt Paines

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How much online security is enough

A couple of years ago I joined the ever increasing and fastest growing clubs on the planet, who's only membership criteria is having your credit card cloned. Being computer and web savvy, I always apply the cautious approach when using credit cards on the Internet, so how they could have got my details to clone worries me.

This week I was reminded of the situation, a client had a significant claw back applied to his credit card merchant account. It is unclear how the cloning took place, but emphasises the need for internet users to be extra vigilant.

With all the virus's, trojans and malware propagating and installing, if you are using your PC to transact online, not only is it imperative to have anti-virus software, but anti-malware, anti-spyware and anti-phishing as well as a decent firewall.

Even armed with this level of security I followed a Twitter post recently (from a "friend") to a web page, on the page was a Video, it managed to secrete a trojan into my machine which wasn't detected at time of installation, but my spyware announced a short time later that a "keyboard sniffer" trojan was active.

It also has to be said that some of the Twitter/Facebook phishing campaigns are seriously convincing, as yet most of them have not been used for anything else than simple mischief but I suspect going forward this will turn into malice and before long the criminal gangs will have worked out a way of monetising this activity.

So to answer the question, for Windows PC's get everything and then be vigilant. For Mac's don't get too smug, one day it might just happen that you are the target of these misguided souls.

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