3 On Your Side: Computer Skimming Warning
By Jim Donovan
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Do you plan on doing any traveling during the holidays? If you use public computers to check in for a flight or at a hotel, criminals could be watching every move you make and recording every key you type.
When businessman John Wetmore travels for work, public computers are his lifeline for email access. But he wonders about who else is watching when he logs on.
"My biggest worry when I'm using a public computer is, has someone installed spyware on it? There's spyware on it, then someone can capture the key strokes and know my account and my password, and then I'm probably vulnerable," Wetmore explains.
There are no laws or regulations requiring that public computers be secured against spyware programs.
Damon Petraglia is a forensic computer investigator. He trains law enforcement agencies on computer security. He says criminals can easily skim your info from public computers with key logging software. They're programs that capture each keystroke that you make, so crooks have access to everything from your screen names to your passwords. According to Petraglia, "There are hundreds and hundreds of different applications that criminals can use in a public environment to do nothing but record your data."
Last year, The Federal Trade Commission received more than 250,000 identity theft complaints, and most victims don't have any idea how it happened. Nikki Junker from the Identity Theft Resource Center says, "You need to stay aware of what's going on. You need to be aware of what you're doing."
To protect yourself at public computers, you should minimize the accounts you access, never type a password and never bank online on a public computer. If you have no choice but to use a password on a public computer, change it as soon as you get home.
It's advice that John Wetmore follows.
"Whatever information someone got when I was on the road, it won't do anybody any good anymore."
In fact, experts say it's good idea to change your password frequently to all the accounts you have as a precaution, no matter where you log on to the web.
