80% of spam originates from zombie pc's

[Mr. Natural]

A report found here (http://www.sandvine.com/solutions/pdfs/spam_trojan_trend_analysis.pdf) in pdf format states that 80% of junk mail originates from home user computers infected with spyware and malware.
I think most of us here are well aware of spyware and such. Do us all a favor though. If you have a family member or friend with a pc and you know they're not as computer literate, take some time to go clean up their pc's by running adaware, spybot, and getting some anti-virus protection on their computer.

[DanTheManPR]

On every computer I fix up for people, I always install AVG, zone alarm and spybot, since most people are running a really old virus scanner. People want virus scanners, but they have no idea how they work, or that you have to maintain it. And of course, no-one uses a firewall.

On one occasion, someone called me asking me to take zonealarm off their machine. Said that it pissed her off that it kept poping up and asking her if she wanted to let a program use the internet. Of course it didn't occur to her to press the little "remember this setting" button so that it wouldn't ask her again. Anyway, she wanted it OFF HER COMPUTER. I said "Sorry, I'm not taking it off you're computer". Then I proceeded to explain why it was a danger to her and other people to not have a firewall. Anyways, I finally just took off zonealarm and turned on the windows firewall, because she was just not computer literate enough to select the "remember this setting" radio button on the zonealarm pop-up thingamajig.

[Gaim Mastr]

Thanks for the info, Mr.N !!

Even though a few of us may already be aware of such things, it's important that we remind ourselves. By cleaning up the systems of our friends and family members we help to clean up the Internet. 80% of spam represents a large portion of eaten bandwidth across the entire Internet that could be better used.

[Ballsout_jimbob]

i know how you feel i went over to my aunt's home to see why her computer keep running slower and slower she just got cable internet about two months ago so i d/l adware and spybot adware found 328 files and spybot found 15 more then adware did then d/l avg and installed windows sp2 2149 with secruity alert showed her how to use it all her computer was run smooth as a babys bottom after that one more spamer down the drain.

[MarkN]

I use Spybot, Spyware Blaster, AVG and ZoneAlarm and run 'em more or less regularly, usually when I'm online since I often look for updates and cuz I keep my comp off when I'm away, anyhow.