By silicon.com, 4 August 2004 18:00
There is a storm brewing in suburbia and it's got nothing to do with what 'her at number 73' said about 'him next door' and 'the girl who mows his lawn'.
Far removed from the curtain twitching of neighbourhood gossips, this threat involves gangs of organised criminals and a plague upon society.
The plague is the constant deluge of spam which floods into our inboxes and the gangs get involved by selling users' home PCs to the groups who drive the unrelenting waves of unsolicited email.
For as little as $2,000 per week vast networks of compromised home PCs are handed over for spammers to use to generate mailing lists and send their nuisance emails.
The bill for this is mainly picked up by businesses but as long as home users continue to carry on oblivious to the problem and allow their machines to be abused in this way it's likely the costs associated will continue to rise - as will the volume of spam being created.
silicon.com tends not to write about consumer issues so much - but never has a consumer issue posed a more serious threat to businesses.
Many home users will get their PC from the shop and never give a second thought to security. But that ignorance, coupled with the fact they are increasingly likely to be plugged into a broadband fat pipe is a recipe for disaster which plays into the spammers' hands.
If your neighbour had a pile of rubbish in their garden which was attracting vermin the council would be onto them in a shot, with fines or court orders and yet the same level of negligence online, arguably to greater detriment will go unnoticed and unpunished.
Ironically it's also likely to be the same users perpetuating this problem who will complain about all the spam they get - not realising the part they have played.
Many consumers won't even unwrap the antivirus software which came with their PC. Many won't think twice about opening an attachment received over email and many will rarely update what defences they do have in place.
Ever wondered why you get so much spam? Ask your next door neighbour what antivirus software they use, or ask her at number 73 how she's configured her personal firewall.
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1. Joe Whitehead
Preaching to the choir. LOL I should know. I have many friends and relatives that I try to help learn about computers. It's like handing a power saw or roman candle and matches to a kid.