It used to be shoulder surfers. Now it’s keyloggers.

Shoulder surfing involved people watching as you keyed in your calling card number and then using it to place calls at your expense. Now someone may be watching your computer using software technology that keeps track of your user names and passwords. This is especially troubling if you are being watched when you do an online visit to your bank account or other financial institutions.

Keylogging can take place in cybercafes or other public internet access sites. But it can also occur at home thanks to software placed on your computer when you visited a website, downloaded software, opened email attachments or made other internet visits. Your best protection is to use technology to fight technology. Some websites such as www.cert.org give advice on avoiding this high-tech crime.