The spam/virus connection

[francis]

Interesting but short article about "zombie PCs" being responsible for 80% of spam (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/04/trojan_spam_study/). I've recently been on the receiving end of loads of virus laided email (thank God for Norton) and there are usually a couple of people a week at work mailing me or coming up to my desk asking really basic Web security questions, so, if this stat is correct, it's not overly surprising.

Hopefull XP SP2 will sort some of this crud out.

[Tom]

Two comments

1) I believe the 'urban myth' about the same folks (if not the same firms) being responsible for anti-virus software and for virus creation

2) I have heard a lot of criticism of Norton recently and have myself switched to Avast! (http://www.avast.com/i_idt_171.html). It is free and it seems to cause fewer problems (eg slow opening of programmes). Whether it is as reliable remains to be discovered.