Now fraudsters are taking a snapshot of your screen

ONLINE FRAUDSTERS are taking snapshots of people’s computer screens in a bid to steal sensitive information. Australian anti-spam group Code Fish has discovered software that attempts to steal passwords by stealing screenshots (a ‘photograph’ of the screen content). Many thefts of data from home computers are caused by keyloggers – software that records characters typed using the keyboard. It gains access to computers via Trojan horses and sends records of keystrokes back to a criminal’s computer, which then analyses the data for any possible bank account numbers and passwords.

Banks have responded by redesigning sites so that customers can use pulldown menus to enter passwords, rather than key them in directly, but now criminals are fighting back. Unsuspecting computer users are sent what looks like an invoice for the purchase of a website. If the user visits the website, a program is downloaded to their PC which attempts to take screenshots whenever the user visits financial websites, such as the Barclays online banking site. A Barclays representative said: “We guarantee customers will not bear any loss as a result of fraud against them.”