You've taught me to be paranoid when it comes to computer email, Dave, which is good. I got a note from a gal named Shawna Dennis from the Better Business Bureau saying that they've received a complaint from one of my customers and that I should reply to the complaint to share my side of the story. But my customers would come to me with complaints, not some Bureau in Arlington, Virginia. What's the story? Is this legit?

I just got an email from an organization called NACHA that claims I have a failed ACH automatic payment transaction. Well, I do pay some bills through electronic funds transfer, but I'm confused: why wouldn't this message have come from my bank rather than some central organization. Is it a scam?

I'm working with a group of software developers and recently had a problem where my copy of Windows 7 automatically updated to change something and the app we're building stopped working on my computer. After we figured out what had happened they told me to disable the automatic system update feature in Windows 7. But how do I turn the autoupdate feature off, it seems like it's built-in to Microsoft Windows now??

I often find myself using public computer systems at Internet Cafes or public libraries to check on my Facebook account while I'm on the road (especially overseas) and after hearing some horror stories about keystroke recorders and stolen accounts, I'm rethinking my strategy. What would be awesome is if there were some sort of temporary or one-time use password I could use to log in to my Facebook account. Do they have something like that available?

Hi, my name is Lori and my friend, Pegah, has found out that her hotmail account has sent out emails to all of her contacts without her knowing. The email says: "Hey How are you doing? I ordered a white 3GS Apple iPhone from a good website -- [[link removed]] -- much cheaper but brand new and genuine! You can check it if you would like. Cheers".

What can she do to stop this?

She is scared to use her computer right now and so I am emailing for her. She said that the last time she used her hotmail was Wed, March 10th. She was not asked for her password today when she tried to go into it. Please help - she is really worried. I received the above email from Pegah to my Yahoo account and the date shown was Thurs, March 11th @ 10:28PM.

I'm a bit anxious that somehow I've ended up with some sort of weird Google spyware or something: every time I want to just go to the Google home page by typing in http://www.google.com/ I end up on the iGoogle page. What's up with that and how do I fix it?

I might be last to this particular party, but before I start shopping on the Web I want to know: is it safe to shop online? I mean, really safe?

Is it possible for someone to access sites when i'm online ? Sites have appeared in the history of my mothers computer that i was using but did not access. As you can imagine these weren't particularly desirable sites.It also mentioned about inserting a disk something else i just didn't do. Is it possible to hack somehow whilst i'm online ? at the time i was using google and visiting sites such as myspace and bebo! I would really appreciate your help as it's caused quite an argument but i genuinely did not access these sites.

I've gotten into blogging with Movable Type (thanks to you, Dave!) and it's going well, except for one annoying thing: I can't rebuild my site. Every time I click on the button instead of getting a little window letting me do that, I just hear a weird beep sound in Microsoft Internet Explorer. What the heck?

Dave, there are a bunch of new comments on my MySpace profile that link to "msplinks.com", even though they look like they're from different people. Is this some sort of unified attack on my profile or what?

If you hop from PC to PC, do you really trust that they don't have spyware, malware or viruses installed, hiding in the operating system? What if you could carry a cheap little keychain pendant that not only offered you storage, but also included effective, easy-to-use anti-virus and anti-spyware applications with which you can quickly scan that suspicious PC and make sure it really is safe for you to use? These devices are just coming out and I had a chance to put one through its paces...

My wife found an email from my spam box in my gmail account that was a reply from an email that was sent from my email address. The problem is I never wrote the email. The address reply is my email address! I have never seen the address before in my life and the message that was sent from my email address is not even anything I can understand. This is very odd. What's going on?

In the past 3 days I've received dozens of returned e-mails that appear to be sent by my domain name but that are not valid email addresses. For example I received a returned e-mail today that was "sent" from nvsnx@mydomainname.com but there is no user "nvsnx". Where did this come from, how do I stop it, and what risk am I at from this happening?

Do u know if myspace brings any viruses to ur computer..... if it does just write back please tell me what I should be looking out for, and why on earth they'd be doing that!

I've been getting plugged into the world of Firefox, and man, it rocks. I really like it, and I especially like that there's a huge library of different extensions that can make Firefox just about jump through flaming hoops. As I keep adding more and more, however, I'm starting to worry about whether it's possible that some of these extensions are actually spyware or viruses. Is that even possible? And if so, how do I avoid being suckered?

I'm having problems with the firewall in Microsoft's Windows OneCare product blocking my downloads from certain sites, and it's driving me crazy! How the heck do I disable the firewall so I can download what I want, then re-enable it when I'm done?

While working on my computer at work online advertisement files will save to my desktop. I have my pop up blocker on and it seems to be working but I keep having items on my desktop for advertisements how do I stop this?

Hey Dave, I was looking at information on the Mirc website and I happened to come across a link called ircnick.com. Since the link came from an official website, I clicked on the link only to be redirected to a site called eta.us. Ever since hearing about phishing and malicious websites (e.g. Googkle) I was concerned as to whether or not the site I was redirected to was insidious in any kind of way (whether or not I had spyware, adware, trojans, etc.). I scanned my computer using various virus and adware scanners (everything was clean). Still feeling uneasy, I need advice, therefore I'm asking you.