Random and occasional thoughts on

I logged in to a bill paying site I have used for several years and got this message: Please note that you will only see this message once and must take immediate action on it. We take great care to keep your personal information secure. As part of these ongoing efforts, we are notifying you that the computer you use for online bill payment may have been exposed to software that puts the security of your computer's contents at risk. This letter will help you determine if your computer is actually infected and advise you how to fix the problem and protect yourself against future risk. The malicious software affects some but not all customers who accessed online bill payment on Tuesday, December 2, 2008. For a limited period of time, some customers were redirected from the authentic bill payment service to another site that may have installed malicious software. Your computer may be infected if all of the following are true: * You attempted to access online bill payment between 1...

Just read this. Kind of scary since upgrading to a newer version should make you safer. Even worse, the browser (IE) seems to be the entry point for many of these attacks. Maybe people and companies should start insisting on an alternate browser instead of simply allowing it in some cases.