How viruses (and your PC) are used to send spam

Monday, 30 June 2003, 10:14 AM EST

Spam has become an international crisis. Security company MessageLabs says about 55 percent of all the e-mail it scans for viruses is actually spam. That's bad news for you and me.

Thanks to continuing effort by legislators and private companies to crack down on this epidemic, spammers now have to try harder than ever before to remain anonymous. For example, a few weeks ago I wrote about spammers exploiting open proxies to conceal their identities behind fake IP addresses.

Unfortunately, it appears spammers have found another creative way to avoid being caught: using millions of virus-infected PCs--one of which could be yours--to send out their junk e-mail messages.

[ Read more ]

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