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These thefts (user name and passwords) are more likely to come from phishing attacks where you get a nice email telling you that your security may have been compromised or you need to complete a security update, etc. etc. and you need to go to the web site to complete the form, etc. When you get their you will have to log-in with your user name and password and bingo it is stolen, now you are in danger of theft of funds and or identity later.

So the moral is don’t click links in unsolicited emails to visit your bank, etc. open your browser and type in your bank’s URL as you won’t be aware that the URL in an email could be displaying a different URL to what you end up at.

avast is an anti-virus and nothing in what has been outlined would be covered by an anti-virus application.

Check out this topic, http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=30249.0 for an extension you can check URLs in your Thunderbird (email program) before visiting them, this is only malware checks but it is a step in the right direction.

Another step if using a browser that has an anti-phishing filter built in, IE7 has and so does Firefox, I believe the firefox one is the better of the two (firefox I feel is the more secure browser), they aren’t perfect but another step in the right direction.

You can also pre scan link s with McAfee SiteAdvisor, another security extension for firefox and this checks the security of the site.