Never ever sign in to any of your accounts on another persons computer! All computers can be set to keep records of everything that ever occurs on that system. A perfect example of this is when I visited one of my (so called) friends and repaired their pc for them. I signed in to my hotmail account on his pc using windows messenger (the one built in to windows). Now, after windows has been reinstalled the first login used to sign in to the messenger is automatically set as the default setting and a startup file is added to the registry. After we powered the pc down and I left, he then started up the pc again to find that windows messenger loaded up on startup and automatically signed in to my account. He had full access to all my details including both my paypal and bank accounts. He did not access any of these accounts but he did decide to start sending offencive e-mails to some of my contacts.

Never sell a computer with the hard drive installed! If you have previously signed in to any kind of account on a computer, then details of that account have been stored on your hard drive. There are software programs out there that claim to permanently remove data making it unrecoverable, but this is not the case. When it comes down to it, a person with technical knowledge can remove the hard drive and strip it down then attain any account details by using data embedded on the magnetic strips. There are also government programs available which are probably capable of recovering this data.

Make sure you have an up to date firewall and antivirus! New viruses are being discovered every day and they are becoming increasingly malicious and powerful. If your antivirus software is not up to date then it is a possibility that you could be hit with a new virus that hasn't long been discovered and if your antivirus software doesn't know about it, then you're not going to find out about it. There are now plenty of viruses aswell as spyware out there that can keep a record of all your passwords and account details then transmit them over the internet.

Do not respond to rogue e-mails! There is a known e-mail scam whereby the e-mail received by the user appears to be from paypal. The e-mail asks the user to confirm their account by filling in their details. Once details have been filled in the e-mails then keep a record of all the account details and are sent back to the same source. A genuine e-mail from a genuine company will NEVER ask you for any kind of personal details. If in doubt, do not respond. Remember, internet security threats are constantly becoming more malicious and harder to detect. Cyber-criminology reports for 2008 claim that top brand name security experts are expecting e-commerce and online banking to come to a stand still. You have been warned! Be careful!