Privacy, Hacking and Virus Alerts

When a machine is compromised with such software, it gives hackers the ability to execute remote commands and install anything they want on the vulnerable PC.

The e-mail, making its rounds locally, shows "Wells Fargo" as the sender and has the subject "Update Your Wells Fargo Accounts!"

I had just called her on an unlisted cellphone number and informed her that I had her Social Security number, Visa card number, bank account and personal identification numbers, and eBay account name and password.

But if your thoughts are halfway around the world, in a war zone where every day is a life-or-death matter for a loved one, and your bank is the Armed Forces Bank, then just maybe you get fooled this one time. Just takes once. Low-life scammers count on it — all the way to the bank.

A persistent computer virus of German origin has flared again, this time dumping torrents of right-wing messages and Web site links into e-mail inboxes worldwide.

"Sasser may have taken top spot, but six of the biggest viruses of the last six months were Netsky and Bagle variants," Cluley said. "These caused a continued nuisance for PC users the world over as their authors entered into a very public game of virus writing one-upmanship."

The virus was attached to a message that was posted on over 30,000 Usenet newsgroups and is not being spread via e-mail, said Web security vendor Sophos.

When run, the new Bagle worms display a message box with the title "Error! Can’t find a viewer associated with the file." Like earlier versions of Bagle, the new variants also harvest e-mail addresses from files stored on the computers they infect and have their own Simple Mail Transfer Protocol engines, which they use to send large volumes of infected e-mail messages.

According to Hypponen, the group has hacked into Web servers of some major Internet service providers that host "huge" Web sites, such as an online auction site and banking sites, to append malicious code to their pages.

Microsoft Corp. issued an unusual weekend security warning Saturday that a worm has been unleashed on the Internet taking advantage of a security hole announced publicly last month (see story). Microsoft once again urged users…