Thank you gentleman and hilary. Lucky escape by the sound of it.

The worrying thing is you don't know how your details were obtained. That may well be woth some thought.

One way is finding out in the future is to make a subtle change in your details when you register on sites each time and record them. I used to have a company htat sent ount millions direct mail letters. we would always add some 'sleepers' to the file. A few were staff members with altered details. That way we could tell if our customer's lists had been stolen in the mailing process.

jj50

read this! It is on the BBC technology page today!It used Firefox location feature!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10850875

This is not likely to be related to jj50's telephone call. That was probably just a name and telephone number bought or stolen from a customer database, or even someone ringing from the telephone directory if you're in there.

The PC support scam has been doing the rounds for a while now - http://www.computeractive.co.uk/computeractive/news/2267232/police-act-shut-cold-call-scam?page=1

Not really sure where they get contact details from. Some reports I've seen were from people who had recently bought a computer from a large retailer.

Some interesting links - thank you all. I am in the telephone book; do use Mozilla and have recently purchased a netbook from John Lewis so guilty on all counts! Google Streetview can't get near my house but that is the only match I don't have! I like the idea of finding a method to identify who is sharing my info online- I have done that for post and it is surprising how much direct mail you get with the adjusted name. All very useful comments. I currently use Rapport (free from RBS) for financial websites but perhaps I should change the password on my wireless router just in case.

Very helpful.

Jennifer

Personally I've always blamed Haystack for all my junk mail :-)

This is PC related can anyone suggest some easy to use basic accounts package please,it would need to run on win2k and vista,i do tend to have alot of scottish blood in my veins hence it needs to be be low in the wonga department :o) Thanks



In other words i am a a tight git.

MB, depends what you want it for in my opinon they are a ll a bit of a scam as they all basically force you into regular expensive upgrades.

For my company I have used several versions on Inuit Quickbooks but I have now abandoned them in favour of the online service from Kashflow (www.kashflow.co.uk) which for my type of business is perfect.

For personal use quicken used to be ok but i have not used it for a while, MS money was the other big competitor in those days.

Tim,thanks for your input mate that is interesting about quicken as i have just found a brand new sealed box of that sortware the only trouble is its dated 1996 and is on floppy disks :o)

You can get a floppy drive from Maplin for 9.99 & upwards

Thanks CCC

MB I've used quicken since 1993 for my domestic and sole trader business. I also do my own tax returns/accounts and it works for me.
PS - I'm Cornish i.e. a tight Scotsman

Anybody know how to stop emails selling viagra, which appear to originate from a friends email address and goes to everyone in her address book.?

She never sends emails to multiple addresses so it appears someone is able to access her address book and use her address to send them. Dont know if they actually originate from her computer.

Bob,

Is this not a pretty clear indication that your pal has a virus on her PC?

The gurus around here will suggest the latest medication. In the meantime I certainly suggest that she takes her PC off the internet - except when it is needed vitally.

TP

I would take a bet that she has picked up a Trojan virus.

She can do a (FREE) Full Scan or Full Sweep of her machine from such as the following:

Spybot Search & Destroy - Home Page
Trend Micro's "Housecall"

I'd try doing the first one of those above for a starter. Full instructions are given in the event of finding a virus.

Another good bit of software for getting rid of trojan's is Malwarebytes . In some cases they can be more difficult in which case asking on http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ might be a way forward.

Many thanks for info guys, much appreciated.

Just spoke to my friend and she is going to run Spybot later today.

She took pc into a computer shop and they said there was nothing wrong. Do not know any more details.

If she still has problem I will drive over and have a closer look in person.

Tks again

Does she use a web-based mail service? Many, perhaps most, people do these days. In that case the problem may simply be that her mail account has been taken over by a bot. Change the password.

Sorry for delay but only just logged on to read messages.
I have been told that messages only go out until one of them fails to connect to a server, so by making the first address in address book aaa@aaa the process is doomed to failure.

Don't know how true this is and quite happy for someone to confirm it's a fairy story :)