So did I tell you about our spyware episode? I guess I didn’t. Because when I was going through it last week, I didn’t feel like writing about it.

Somehow, the firewall on my computer got compromised. (My guess is user error!) Anyway, then the virus protection got turned off by a malicious program. Then, spyware was downloaded and our keystrokes were captured. Then someone accessed my brokerage account with my social security number. Since it happened to MANY people at my brokerage, they detected it as fraud and halted the buys. They were pumping a stock with many accounts so they could then dump it. Long story short:

I’m getting a new computer and I’m reformatting the hard drive.
I had to put alerts on everything including my credit reports.
I had to change all my passwords and account numbers.

The thing is, we are a very computer savvy family. We thought everything was ok because we had a firewall and virus software that updates regularly. But somehow, it got turned off.

So my advice is.. make sure you CHECK your virus software and firewall regularly. And run scans once and awhile outside of the jobs that just run nightly or whatever on your computer. It’s amazing what turns up.

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