MANY RECENT articles (at least half a dozen) were written about a recommendation from the Australian police, which advised peers to use GNU/Linux for online banking. This was followed by a column from the Washington Post, which sent waves across the Web. Several other articles were then published to suggest that people use a Live CD or an additional partition for their banking purposes, unless they already use the platform or might move to it on a full-time basis.

A Pennsylvania organization that helps develop affordable housing learned a painful lesson about the hazards of online banking using the Windows operating system when a notorious trojan siphoned almost $480,000 from its account.