While you are doing your holiday shopping on the Web, it would be wise to remember that Identity theft is a big problem. If your system is infected, Trojan keylogger spyware could be sucking up your personal financial info as you type it into your Web browser and then relaying it to identity thieves who will use it to steal everything you have.
StrikeForce Technologies says it has the perfect solution with its GuardedID program. GuardedID (which has an introductory price of $30 after a $10 instant rebate) promises to safely cloak your keystrokes when you're typing into browser forms--providing unbreakable protection against keyloggers.
According to Executive Vice President George Waller, the application grabs your keyboard input at inception, encrypts it, and "reroutes it around the stack to the browser." Waller says that GuardedID can tell who's running first in the kernel, and it will place itself as the first priority to prevent malware from getting in and subverting the process before the data is encrypted.
The company has a simple video on its site to illustrate the application's function in the presence of a keylogger. Note that the program is designed to work only when you are logging information into your Web browser (the point of greatest jeopardy for ID theft). The company is even offering a free copy of GuardedID for ID theft victims who send their info and story to story@guardedid.com (the company says it will verify and qualify respondents).
GuardedID--promising as it sounds for its intended purpose--will not protect against keyloggers' grabbing your keystrokes when composing e-mails or other documents. And I haven't yet had a chance to get hands-on experience with the program. I'll try to get a review up for you soon.
Of course, this kind of app is only one component in a proper security solution, a point that Waller acknowledges. "Antivirus and firewall programs are as essential as ever," he says. "Today it takes a layered approach for proper protection."
From my point of view, you need all the protection you can get. I would also encourage you to check out our most recent rankings of antispyware apps.
