Are you aware that your passwords, credit card numbers, user names, and other useful information, might be getting stolen without you even knowing it! And that too – as soon as 
you type it!! Yes, some software applications which work stealthily can do so. One of such applications is a key logger software. A key logger software is an invisible software program that can be used to track your computer keyboard activity, including your online activity.
Generally speaking, it may be difficult to detect a key logger software on your computer. There may be no machine slow down or any unusual thing happening. A key logger software will just silently watch every keystroke you type in. Inspite of your best care and caution, you can never be sure if some key logger software is stealthily recording your confidential useful information such as bank account passwords or other passwords, credit card numbers, etc. Moreover, a key logger may be able to secretly record even your passwords even though what you yourself see on the screen is just “*******”! And, such information may be sent secretly to some e-mail account of the hacker or some web location without you even knowing it!!
A key logger software can be used for what can possibly be termed as “justifiable” use and “unjustifiable” use. If a company uses a key logger software to monitor its employee activity or the parents use it to check the computer use of their children, and all this in “good faith”, one can probably term it as a “justifiable” use at least to some extent because ultimately it is for some common good purpose (of course, some persons may not agree even with this!). But if a hacker, wanting to steal your financial information, uses a key logger software on your computer without permission and without any lawful authority on you, it is definitely “unjustifiable” and can be extremely dangerous. Such hackers or their agents can use these stolen passwords and credit card numbers to take out or transfer money from your bank accounts or charge your credit cards, without your knowledge. They can also use the stolen passwords and other useful information to harm you in many different ways, such as operating your web accounts unauthorisedly, impersonating as you, etc. In fact, it is estimated that a major portion of all online scams can now be traced to secret key-logging.
In addition to secret key-logging, your passwords and credit card numbers may also be at risk due to similar softwares secretly recording mouse-activities, secretly performing screen-capture, etc.
It was estimated that in 2004 alone, more than 9.9 million Americans were victims of identity theft scams, costing them nearly $5 billion, in addition to the mental agony faced by the victims and the time and energy lost. The actual number of victims and their losses would probably be much higher as several cases go unreported because of various reasons. Experts feel that such cases are rising at an alarming rate.
So, would you like to be a victim of a theft of your passwords and credit card numbers?
Would you like your stolen passwords and credit card numbers, etc., being used by hackers and their associates to withdraw your hard-earned money from your bank accounts?
Would you like unauthorized persons impersonating as you using your stolen passwords, user names, etc.?
I know your answer will definitely be a resounding “No”. What you need to do is to be aware of the potential danger and keep using techniques to detect such unwanted activity on your computer. You may also use some good anti-spyware software and anti-virus software, etc. I am not going into the individual software names here. One can easily “Google” to find out these names.
(This article was originally written in 2006.)
Did you like this article? To get all such articles from Tech Superb directly:
Related Articles:
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
