A Call To Banish Botnet PCs
January 25th, 2010 by ComputerBob
According to the organizations that track such things, approximately 95% of all email messages these days are spam.
Where does all that spam come from?
Well, we know that an awful lot of it comes from Windows PCs whose swiss cheese of security vulnerabilities have allowed them to become infected by “botnet” software that turns them into “zombies” — zombies that happily commandeer their unsuspecting users’ Internet connections to send out millions of spam messages each day.
The problem would vanish — or at least be greatly reduced — if Windows users knew how to keep their computers clean and safe from malware, as well as how to disinfect their computers once they become infected.
Or if Windows was built securely enough to not require them to know and do all of that.
Unfortunately, many users don’t have a clue how to do either of those things.
And new Windows security vulnerabilities are discovered and exploited every few days.
So, if you’re running Windows, then it’s not really a question of IF your computer is ever going to be infected by malware — it’s a question of WHEN it’s going to be.
And how many times it will happen.
And how often it will happen.
And so 95% of the email messages that we all get are spam.
But Australia — a major contributor to the botnet problem — is hoping to reduce its contribution by banning infected PCs from the Internet.
That sounds like a good idea to me, but let’s see what Slashdot’s readers have to say about it.
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Tags:
Consumer Info, Cybercrime, Internet, Rights, Security, Tech Support, Windows