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We all try to keep our payment processor accounts safe. Criminals are trying just as hard to steal money from our accounts. They have hacked, hijacked and phished their way into steal untold amounts. With the latest rash of reports about stealing from egold, it is time to publish a safety checklist.
People who use egold run a risk of having it hacked if they unknowingly have a virus loaded to their computer, usually from surfing, and that virus steals their egold log in information either by capturing keys typed (a key-logger) or by having a hidden mirror image of egold, which captures the log on information. They can also have it stolen by lowering their security to accept spends from any IP address. Another way is to click on a link in an email that looks like it came from egold, but it’s really came from a someone else, and the link sends them to a site that looks like egold, but isn’t (phishing).
Egold and PayPal are the two most common payment processors, therefore they are the two most commonly hacked. As an example, I had my PayPal account hacked a while ago when I opened up a suspicious email because I wanted to see where the link went. I did not use it to log onto PayPal, but the next day money had been stolen from PayPal. The criminal had installed a program that captured my PayPal log on information when I went to the real PayPal site. Remember that criminals try to steal from any payment processor that they can, not just egold and PayPal.
Here are the things that people can do to help prevent their payment processor account from being hacked:
- Create a separate email for your payment processors. Do not use the email for anything else.
- Create a password that is at least 15 characters, mixed numbers and characters and mixed upper and lower case. (Roboform has an excellent password generator and encrypted way of remembering it.)
- Change your password frequently.
- Never use Internet Explorer to log into a payment processor site. It is too easy to hack. Use FireFox or Opera.
- Check your account balance and history frequently.
- If the site offers extra security, such as virtual keyboard, use it.
- Never open suspicious emails. If you do open one, never click on the link, even if it looks like your payment processor’s real link.
- Keep your virus, spyware and anti-hacker software up-to-date and run their full scans frequently.
- Clean your private data stored on your browser, such as cookies, temp files, etc. after every day’s surfing.
- Clean your temp files on your computer (search on *.tmp,*.chk,~*.* to find them) frequently. Note: it is normal to have some temp files that can not be deleted.
- Subscribe to a newsletter or read a daily blog that contains news about new payment processor hijacking attempts.
- Keep alert when you spend from your account for any reason. Is the account number/name of the receiver the same as you were expecting?
A little prevention goes a long way towards keep your accounts safe. Criminals are intent on coming up with new ways to steal your money. Please be careful.
Stay Safe,
Sharon
Note: If anyone has any additions to the list, please leave a comment.
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16 Responses to “Keep Your Accounts Safe”
- 1 Pingback on Jan 22nd, 2007 at 3:37 pm
- 2 Pingback on Jan 22nd, 2007 at 3:53 pm
- 3 Pingback on Feb 9th, 2007 at 6:44 am
- 4 Pingback on Mar 24th, 2007 at 12:25 am
- 5 Pingback on Mar 24th, 2007 at 12:49 am
- 6 Pingback on Mar 24th, 2007 at 12:55 am
- 7 Pingback on Mar 24th, 2007 at 1:25 am
Great check list! In addition I use a dedicated computer ONLY for online accounts.
A second computer for the surfing and e-mails. Both behind a router & setup high security.
In services under administrative tools, Disable: Clipbook, Messenger, Netmeeting remote desktop sharing, Universal plug and play device host.
Disable: Client for microsoft networks, File and printer sharing for microsoft networks.
If you must use I.E., disable: Allow paste operations via script.
usually I used Ccleaner.com for cleaning alltemporary files, cookies, etc. and to remove active=x contents.
just one click and all removed. http://ccleaner.com
Excellent suggestions! Thank you!!
hello,
Could someone give a link to such a newsletter or daily blog.
Very good suggestions.
Thnx
Subscribe to a newsletter or read a daily blog that contains news about new payment processor hijacking attempts
Yep, do subscribe to us. We’re updated daily. *Shameless plug-in like what chancer always does! :P*
Hey guys and gals
Just wanted to point you to some great software on the market free of charge, that can be used when autosurfing or accessing your egold account, without the risk of your account being compromised.
Go to the following website http://www.vmware.com/products/player/
Download the VMWARE PLAYER. This software is freeware.
After that download the BROWSER APPLIANCE. This is a preconfigured UBUNTU desktop environment with Firefox installed.
Install the VMWARE PLAYER.
Unpack the Browser Appliance
Run VMWARE PLAYER and select the Browser appliance.
After the appliance is started, you can use Firefox in a very secure environment.
You can set the properties to read only, so nothing you do on this virtual machine will be saved after you shut it down. No cookies to worry about and no trojan’s that can compromise your egold account. I use this everyday and all I can say is, give it a try and you’ll be hooked.
I hope this will help protect ppl against those &^%&^%*$%#@ hackers.
Regards,
Juan
P.S.
Virtual Machines run in a virtual environment. This means, that you can run a complete different operating system (Linux or Windows) within your Windows Operating System. This virtual environment runs in a protected space, so nothing on your host machine (the windows OS) will be affected by the processes in this virtual environment.
I’ve used vmware before. Nifty tool I say. Hey Juan, thanks for introducing it to our readers as well! and hope you enjoy your daily feeds here
@Jude,
No problem. Little effort to help my fellow investors to feel safe.
and I like reading the stuff you put online. Keep up the good job. 
I’m a daily visitor of this blog (often more than 10 times a day)
Regards,
Juan
woah! that’s a really nice gesture and compliment. hope you like our stuffs here and continue to support us!