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Warning: This post contains geek speak.

>> One of the uses for rootkits is to hide programs on your PC that will wait until you connect to your bank, and then add a few instructions to those you send along, asking for some money to be transferred out to the bad guys account as well.

For those of you wondering if you have a rootkit on your computer, here is a link that may help you out (http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevealer.html )

Spoofing: is a process where you fool the network into thinking you are someone else (like sending an email in bill gate’s name to Slashdot and surrendering). Spoofing can also be used to breach IP address specific protection schemes.

Spyware: (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/spyware )
Spyware can range from a cookie placed on your system so the owner can tell what outer sites you visit that use their service to software that records key presses (Key logger) and sends them to the criminal looking for your information, they can compare things in your favorites, web sit addresses etc and when you go to a site that looks promising, they can “capture” your keystrokes before they reach the browser. In this way they capture your login and account information to your bank, and once transmitted to the crook planting this thing, they can log in just as easily as you can.

Do not trust the “Default” setup on any machine, get a third party firewall (so the default methods of getting through won’t work on your machine. If you are running a a windows box, I like Zone alarm http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/home.jsp ) Run a spy ware Checker regularly (I like spybot search and destroy http://www.spybot.com/ and ad aware http://www.lavasoft.com/ ) Also run a Virus scanner that will watch your email program for incoming virus’s (Try http://www.grisoft.com/doc/1 )

Just thought you might want to know, besides, these all have free versions!

NJoy

The software firewalls such as zonealarm that you mention can check for outgoing network connections that your PC tries to make from applications you don't authorize to make connections, but:

You have to know enough of what you're doing to be able to correctly tell the firewall software what application is allowed to call out and what one isn't. In my experience, the majority of users simply don't have this expertise.
They don't prevent fraudulent outgoing connections from allowed applications that have been hijacked.
They do little to stop incoming connection attempts. You need a hardware firewall to do a good job of that.

See the bottom of my Freeper home page, ThePythonicCow's Best Sites for Computers, Networking, and HTML for a list of useful resources.