Bullseye.
Thats why i am so ultra cautious about messing with my machine.
The info is incredible. Particularly some of the newer components such as Hunter and the GAIN network.
The media stuff about identity theft is largely scare mongering. It exists, but these applications are so refined nowadays that the vast majority of attempts are rooted out straight away, but you can never be too careful.
alan

I had a guy who worked for me. His father in law worked for Fords at Dagenham and because he was a relative he was able to buy a car at a discount from Fords. He applied for hire purchase and was turned down due to credit scoring. This was strange as he was squeaky clean and I was paying him a small fortune. He even owned his house outright. In those days Experian (CCN then) would not discuss it. I had him checked through a client who we were doing IT work for on the credit scoring/lending area. It turned out that the previous owner of his house had the same surname and had an appaling credit history. The system associated the two and he had a dire credit score as a result. He went back to CCN and asked if the problem might be the previous owner and said he could prove that he was unrelated. Even then they would not correct the problem. He got the credit in the end because my company stood as guarantor for the loan.

If you know how, it is easily possible to circumvent credit scoring even now. But that's another story and not for public consumption.

Agreed. Circumventing is a doddle, and not for public airing. The difficult bit (since 2001 anyway) is passing off as another. That is getting harder by the day.

It is fairly easy to pass off as another for a short time (long enough to acquire plenty of money). Someone I know had it done to them and the method was so simple it is quite alarming. Just be careful during the period that you are moving house is all I can say.

My brother in law had that as he moved house, and you are right, it is a very dangerous time for identity theft, but recently there have been some checks and balances introduced by many financial institutions to highlight abnormal or irregular applications that are quite sophisticated and use much deeper knowledge than experian / equifax / ccn or Dunn & Bradstreet use.
Still for anyone who has a very in depth knowledge they can do it, but it is a much longer process now and the chances of being caught massively increase with how long the process takes to get you to a point where the rewards are worthwhile.
Nuff said.
The less joe public knows about how these frauds are committed, the easier they are to catch and we have no idea who may be reading this thread!!
Alan

Have used CCleaner for over 3 years, with no problems - just use the basic default settings. Use it at the end of every session. It should remove the need for adaware/spybot.

Don't use norton or other bloated stuff -use something like avg.

Get rid of all sorts of crap that runs in the background.
http://qwertymaniac.wordpress.com/2006/03/22/disabling-useless-services-and-sppeding-up-your-computer/

http://www.dead-eye.net/WinXP%20Services.htm



As to the fraud debate. The media often scaremongers but online security of businesses is poor. There are hundreds of online businesses/companies whose databases are insecure. And as to the law -as usual this country lags behind the USA. Their law makes it the responsibility of companies to automatically protect us as the default and if it doesn't they have to pay. That is not the case here yet. Many security experts will not bank online, buy anything online and use cash at petrol stations!

Has anyone any experience of using Limewire for free mp3 downloads?

skinny
I don't known whether you saw a story about a week ago concerning a user of a peer to peer file sharing system. He was able to retrieve many other types of files apart from mp3. In particular he accessed doc type files which contained personal details of other users. He had the details of many bank accounts, passwords and personal information. He contacted one of the people who was easily identified and was thanked for the information. The contact was too late as the person had been robbed using the information just a couple of days earlier.

Hmmm no I didn't Haystack - perhaps I'll do a bit of research - many thanks.

The problems occur due to the way people set up the sharing of parts of their filesystem (or all of it). It is the result of people with too little technical knowledge using powerful applications that have unexpected consequences.

The story was tramsmitted on SKY news in full.

Here is one shorter reference to the story

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1254004,00.html

Unsafe: Music File Sharing
Updated: 17:18, Friday March 02, 2007
Sky News has learned that people who share files on the internet could end up sharing far more than they intended.

The news room has been contacted by a concerned viewer who had stumbled across some highly confidential documents while using a file sharing program.

Sky's Paul Harrison said Andy Coyle from London was innocently searching for music using such software when he came across other people's sensitive documents.

They included passport details of film stars and other celebrities, contact details and other personal data.

Credit card information and bank statements for a senior foreign dignatory had also been accessed including PINs and passwords.

Harrison said the implications was potentially huge.

"People close their doors at night and think they are safe but because their computer can be accessed by file-sharing, their documents are not secure," he said.

Mr Coyle warned other web users: "They are losing their IDs. If I know about this then others are doing it for other purposes."

If you want to be safer using file sharing sites, you could always find a Live Linux system that has a peer to peer client, boot your PC (or better still an old PC with no hard disk) from the CD and save your downloaded files to a USB drive.

I know it's a complicated way of doing it, but it would totally isolate your PC from any threat and the Linux systems are free.

There is some very dangerous software around, so be careful. I have seen suggestions that a number of peer-to-peer systems originating in Russia are available specifically to get access to information on personal PCs. They work on the basis that many people will be careless in setting up security and sharing on their PCs.

Skinny,

I'm just starting to use Napster as I heard about limewire here and then was told it was dangerous as it had a reputation of landing you with bugs.

My understanding is the Napster is not peer to peer and they make a big thing about being bug free.

With Napster you pay a sub and this can be two levels. The higher level gets you MP3 files you can transfer to another device. If you want to download and burn to a CD you pay an extra fee per track.

I have also ordered an FM transmitter for my laptop so that we can listen to my downloaded files anywhere in the home. Should arrive early next week.

TP

Thanks for the input chaps - not totally compus - been watching Ireland/Scotland fueled by London Pride - but as an aside, my son used Napster about 4 years ago and I got totally brassed off with the viruses that it brought - maybe things have changed with the site? BTW Wales are now winning 13-17!

Skinny

It was Gausie who mentioned Limewire in Feb.

http://www.moneyam.com/TradersRoom/posts.php?tid=11139#lastread

Maybe you can ask him if he still uses it.

TP

Daughter uses limewire as do most of her friends. No problems thus far. Try allofmp3 for cheapest payment option to music.

I am after some software called Dreamweaver 8 i guess i am looking for a supplier that is very cheap,has any one any suggestions please ???? It has to be a legal version,we dont want any pirate copies do we.

Rick.....

Help please. I have been trying to install version 7.5 of AVG Anti Virus (Free Edition) on an old laptop. It appears to be working then I get the following message:

Local machine: installation failed
Installation:
Error: Action failed for file avgamsvr.exe: stopping service....
Service Avg7Alrt failed to progress during stopping at checpoint 1 (wait hint 5100 ms) in 85413 ms

I am turning off the Windows Firewall whilst attempting the installation.. Any suggestions would be welcome!

Thanks, Jennifer

Jennifer, what operating system does the old laptop run? If it's ME or W95/98 you will almost certainly have a problem.

edit, it appears 95 is supported, it suggests Norton Internet security being on the machine will compromise it. Have you got a version of Norton or any other old security software on the machine?

SC, Thanks.

It is XP - just when it came out. There was Norton on the machine but I thought I had got rid of it but that could be the problem. I was running the old AVG 7.1 successfully, the problem started when I had to update it this year. Shall check for any old security files again.