What's wrong? Virus? Trojan? what?

[calmius]

My dad says he's been buying phone calling cards over the net, where after he's entered payment they give him codes that he uses to call. He says he's bought 2 cards and that the minutes have been mysteriously dissapearing from the cards!!!
He suspects that it might be something sitting in the computer and recording what he types in MS Word, because he typed the codes up and printed them. I think it's unlikely there is a keystroke recorder loade in the computer that secretly sends the data somewhere, but what could it be? We scanned the comptuer for viruses and no results!

[EzyStvy]

Or he could be getting ripped off by the people selling the cards. Has he contacted them? Has he researched them?

[calmius]

In a way he is ripped off by them because their return policy says "No returns, no refunds, all sales final. Only refunds are made on the unused or defective cards."
I too think that it's more likely that they're ripping people off or someone has found a way to generate or steal codes from their database. Doesn't that seem more likely?
But let's assume there was a keyboard tracer installed on his computer? is there any way to figure out? would ZoneAlarm detect the outgoing sygnal? or is it more likely that it's masked by some other program you would not suspect like IE or whatever?

[doctorgonzo]

ZA or any firewall should detect it. That is how I discovered a keylogger on my PC recently. Also, make sure you do a virus scan in safe mode.

But it sounds like the company is the guilty party here. That is much more likely than having your codes stolen from your PC. Research the company and see what is happening. Perhaps they are selling the same codes to multiple people, and they are all wondering where the heck their minutes are going.