Boy aged three buys himself a new car

I wish I could have done this when I was three.

Young Jack Neal from Sleaford in Lincolnshire, where the internet must seem like witchcraft to the elders, simply logged himself on to his mum' s PC, opened up eBay, where she had carelessly left her account to auto-log-on, and saw a nice big pink car listed - a retro-styled Nissan Figaro.

He simply had to click the "Buy it now" button and the £9000 car was his, isn't technology wonderful ?

Then his spoilsport parents got involved and contacted the seller who agreed to void the sale and relist he car, spoiling a good story in the process. This one could have run and run as the parents would have been forced to take out a finance agreement for the car and take delivery of it, listing Jack as the registered keeper - what fun they could have had trying to get insurance for him, I would have loved to have been the one on the phone speaking to Budget Insurance trying to get a quote.

"Pah !" we all cry, "that could never happen to me"
And indeed thats exactly what I did cry.

And then I thought about my eBay account, sitting on the kitchen table right now, snuggled up inside my laptop, which is already plugged into the mains and the home network, it just needs a small finger to press the "on" button and it will boot up without a login required, and then one more click and a small person could find him/herself inside eBay, and guess what ?

I've got eBay set to automatically log me in each time it opens because I'm hopeless at remembering passwords and in any case can't be arsed with two many keypresses when the programme will log you in without any effort.

And I'm at the office now, and my wife is at home, and on "My Favourites" list a few months ago she added that diamond merchant in Birmingham who sells "genuine" three and four carat diamond rings for "just a few thousand" and now I'm thinking that I need some serious security on my laptop, no not more passwords but a fekking git big padlock and chain wrapped around it and the eBay icon named as something like "Car Mechanics" or "Fishing gear".