We're seeing more and more cases where thieves don't have to come near you to make you a victim.

Here are two from our Crimestopper's Notebook. (The logo is from Arkansas.)

We first take you to Australia, where Peter McCrindle is still trying to get $10,000 stolen from him by a computer virus.

Here's how the thief did it. They first sent out spam, spoofing a real bank's return e-mail address, with a (then) false claim of a loss in the account. Clicking on the link in the spam sent the victim to a spoof site, which inserted the virus. The virus was a keylogger that allowed its author to tap into whatever the victim was typing, such as the password on their Internet banking account. The rest was fairly easy.

The second story is something I heard while driving around yesterday on NPR. (It's a popular Internet rumor.)

Instead of stealing cars by breaking into them, thieves are taking orders for specific makes and models, finding likely suspects in parking garages, then opening their doors just to get at the VIN numbers. These are unique identifiers for cars that are usually posted on a plate inside the car door. The thieves then use the numbers, and a computer, to get new registrations from DMV sites, take the registrations to hardware stores for keys, and take the cars at their leisure.

Sounds like a lot of work to me, but with fewer real jobs out there it's going to become common. Remember, thieves are more afraid of you than you are of them. They will go to great lengths not to confront you. They just want your stuff.

If you get what seems to be an e-mail from your bank, call the bank to make sure it's legitimate. (No legitimate bank should be asking for personal information in an e-mail anyway.) And if you're driving a popular car, you might want to have your mechanic move that plate to somewhere a thief wouldn't find it. Something tells me the most popular form of VIN protection, VIN etching, would just make matters worse.