Thanks Bongo - I think I am getting there now.
You refer to Ironsides example of an image being presented each time we log in. I have seen & used this on yahoo mail. They have a little box, with 4 or 5 digits sort of scrawled in it graffiti style. You have to type in the letters you see. How on earth does this work? Surely we ALL see the same image, be we a hacker or not?
And whilst I am very grateful to you for your patience with us in explaining all this, I'd ask you to be a little more respectful to Matey Boy. He's gonna have to change his password now youve told everyone!
I know one thing for sure though. I need to change most of my passwords - this thread has frightened the life out of me. I don't suppose I am the only one, either.
The image thing is to stop a computer program trying to get in to your account. These programs cannot recognise the text in an image.