>ya there are a zillion of those keyboard-capture programs, heck you could even make one with VFP. I'd say about 99% of those are NOT going to be picked up by any AV software. As for the firewall, that will help if the capture log is being sent by the keyboard-capture program - but the better ones are going to just wait until you open outlook or something then slip it out that way. FYI ZoneAlarm Pro is better than nothing but it is the laughing stock of all hackers. It's to easy to have your firewall-beater-trogen or whatever modify (or even delete) zonealarm's rules - thus making it rather useless.

It's not useless, it's just that if you set the security so high as to detect anything incoming, it inhibits you too much from normal web activities, so in that sense you have a point. But it's interesting sometimes to set it on high security, and watch it occasionally detect and stop a probe of your machine, it will do that. But forget using the web for normal activities at that level.

As to what AV will stop, AFAIK it will only stop keyboard-capturers that have actually been used in things like credit card theft, and then reported and investigated - they do have to know what to look for, you have a point there also. Probes that capture and do nothing with the info will not be easily detectable, but then maybe who cares?

So as a user, you have various trade-off chices to make on how strong you make your firewall, and how much risk you use your computer for. Me, I'm not worth too much anyway, I install what I consider higher-than-avergae security, and hope for the best, just as you probably do. And if someone's really after your info, they can get it through phone taps, mail theft, fax diversion, you name it. About then, you are probably talking paranoia, or time to spend a lot on major league security.