i just had my gmail account hacked, along with another friend. posers send all contacts a link to click on for drug ads.

anyone else have this problem? if so what are you doing about it. i've changed all passwords and user id's for most online stuff. also called equifax for some 3:1 monitoring. am i going overboard?

finally, i own a mac. so many people say you don't need antivirus on them. but i want to run some and also spyware. any recs?

Interesting article came out today comparing Macs to Windows. Turns out that Macs may actually be *more* vulnerable security-wise because the entire culture is so lackadaisical about security. The difference is that they aren't targeted as often because Macs hold a significantly smaller market-share than Windows PCs.

I don't think you are going overboard at all. Often times, our email accounts are the window to all our personal information. Some people have their investment accounts, bank accounts and all other personal accounts linked to one email address. All someone has to do is go to a website and click "Forgot my password" and often times the password gets emailed right over. There's no way for you to know if they took advantage of that.

One area where some people get "hacked" is though people guessing what the Secret Question is. With all the social networks, a lot of personal information is available through places like facebook and the such. If a website has a security question of "what's your high school mascot" and you have the year and school you graduated from, it's real easy to figure out.

You may want to look into something like LifeLock or a similar service. It's something I've been strongly considering. I'm sorry this happened to you. I hope there is a special place in hell for hackers and the scumbags that write viruses.

i just had my gmail account hacked, . any recs?

As one of my computer teachers told me

when your done on the computer
shut it off.

ClamXav (http://www.clamxav.com/)