I just watched this on ABC,so if you travel away from home ,computers in Hotels etc can get to you also The fbi says don t leave your computer on when your not using it. Doris H.

Im glad to hear the News Networks and FBI is making the public more aware of computer fraud. But the real truth, is that computer user's have been fooled into beliveing that the residence Antivirus program on there computer will keep them safe... SO WRONG, The big Antivirus Companys have Lied and they know it... A computer use today Needs Mutiple Protection tools. To keep there computer safe. Im a member of a International computer help group, and we test and use mutiple tools. The public needs to know this if they wish to keep there computers truly SAFE.

The response from he Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (maintains Gov't retirement accounts) about not being liable for losses really upset me. They claim no responsibility but provide minimal security in the format in which they require users to login to their accounts with SSN and a four digit numeric PIN. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!! While this goes on in the government, other agencies (FFIEC)that regulate the banking and credit union industry have been enforcing additional authentication requirements to prevent the exact events that this report was about. How ironic is that?

Something to remember when you use a computer on the road

Can you post online the video on Brian Ross' 401K story from GMA this morning?

There's such an easy way to combat this in the U.S.: Stop off-shore software development. And, refuse to do business with any company that endeavors in off-shore software development.

I'm a Network Admin for a small boutique hotel chain.
IF the hotels have the luxory of having an IT department, they would have properly set up the business center computers to avoid anyone installing rogue software on them.
Using a simple tool by microsoft, I've secured my hotel guests privacy when they access our public computers.
After every user is finished, either they can log off the machine or after 5 minutes of inactivity, the computer logs them off and reboots, effectivly restoring itself back to the way it was on the day i set it up.
Any shortcuts, virus's and spyware, installed software, personal documents are erased.
I've implemented this free download at all of our hotels and so far I have not seen any trouble.
(The only complaint from some guests is that the normal windows experience is very restricted)

Granted, I know not every hotel (even large chains) have an IT staff available for the guests and hotel staff itself, so you should definitly be cautious of where you do your finances.

What knucklehead would trust a publicly available computer such as found at hotels and Internet cafes for such work?

Hackers stealing retirement funds?
This has been going on forever.
Of course we used to call them the IRS and congress.
But the damage is the pretty much the same.

I was almost a victim of this type of hack. Only thing that saved me was that I had set up email notification on my accounts for all transactions. It appears that someone hacked the telephone access, used that access to change my online password, then went online and transferred funds from a mutual fund into a money market. When I received the email on the changes to my account, I contacted the broker, advised I had not initiated these changes, and they immediately suspended access. However, it took me another 3 months, registered letters etc to get the brokerage to reverse the transfers and restore my account.

Apparently, there is a new scam where folks who make bad trades that lose money attempt to call brokerages and claim identity theft in order to reverse the trades... Hard to keep up.

Lesson learned, set up email notification on ALL access to you online accounts, change your ACCOUNT where possible to a alphanumeric account name (rather than SSN), and if your bank or brokerage offers it, go to two factor authentication (not just online password but some other personally set question)

I think we should just go back to the golden days, where there was more privacy on our lives and less to worry about someone else stealing your nested eggs.

Forgive my lack of knowledge, but do the same problems apply if your accessing through your own computer at a hotel using wifi or dial-up?

It seems investigative journalists are able to track down the very people that are committing the scams, committing fraud, etc....and I feel our government or a mercenary should be able to do the same. Once you find the culprit......the next course of action is simple. After that, you catch a flight home.

Banks in the UK have changed to a system where you not only enter a User Name and Password but also have to enter several letters in a drop down list from a pre-designated word.

Assume the word is: clinton,

you might be asked for the 2nd and 5th letter.
Yu select these using a mouse on a drop down list.
This makes a keystroke logging program fail.
Also, the next time you log on, the server asks for different letters.

On a similar issue, all UK and most European credit card trasactions now require the entry of a PIN number into a terminal, and NOT a signature, which is not required.

Wake up America and start providing decent financial security.

This is all dependant upon who provides internet services to the hotels. Yes even your own computer could be vulnerable on certain networks.

Some hotels will only contract services from companies that offer more than adequate protection for your own computer as well as business center computers. The issue here is that ALL hotels need to be made aware of these issues and ensure that their service providers are doing all that they can to protect their guests.

You have to be careful in todays world. With more and more services being done through the internet, criminals are finding out it is much easier to get someones data and money through a key logger program or a phishing trick. On top of my Norton antivirus, I also use WebRoot anti spam and logger program to block and scan for any type of trojan progams

Will ABC blame Bush for this too lol

Our Company sells, manages and monitors guest use computers for top hotels around the country. The foundation of our offering is security, privacy and reliability. Through our proprietary client management software, our systems are locked down to prevent hackers from loading any key stroke software and we electronically shred all guest user data upon ending their session. We proactively monitor and update our systems 24x7x365. My advice is that hotels provide their valuable guests with a high quality service such as ours and that hotel guests needing secure public access computers stay at a hotel offering our secure guest use computers.
Victor Alikin

I am a director of MIS for a large upscale hotel chain, who we wont mention. The point being most of these business centers are run by 3rd party companies. While most have software remedies like mentioned above, hardware is never locked down or secured. Very easily someone could slip in put a hardware device that records credit card information as well as echo key strokes. NO hotel is 100% safe from this. Best advise is use your head or bring your own laptop to use on travel.

If I take my computer to a hotel, log on to read my newspaper or check the email but do not log on to scottrade or my financials.... can they still track my password and wipe me out?
Or is it only if I log on to financial website with password.
I'm scared. Please tell me.