The Zombies are all around us!

Spammers spam because it works. But for it to work, you need numbers - lots and lots of spam sent out in the shortest possible time.

The Zombies are a way of dividing the labour among the computers of the everyday computer user - maybe even you!

In a prior article, Doug Stein wrote:
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In June 2006, an estimated 80% of e-mail spam were sent by zombie PCs alone, an increase of 30% from the prior year.
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So the evil mastermind is using your own PC against you. E-mail zombie programs are designed to work behind the scenes. You'll just think your computer is slow.

Meanwhile, your network card is busy spewing out thousands of messages. If you pay for excess traffic, you might find yourself with an unexpected bill.

The Zombie system works like this. Once your PC is infected, it sits and waits for instructions from the bad guy. Once the bad guy decides what he wants sent, he sends instructions to agent PC's who, in turn, relay the information to the zombies. Then the zombies get to work and send this spam message to every e-mail address it can. Usually the list comes down with the message from the agents and sometimes the zombies act as e-mail address collection agents and send these addresses back to the bad guy to "add to the list".

In so doing, millions of PC's can send thousands of messages each in one night and you have multiple billions of spam messages sent out. Odds are, someone's going to buy the snake oil.

There are many things you can do to prevent this. For one thing, try Linux instead of Windows. Right away, you'll drastically cut down on your risk.

But for your average stuck-with-Windows user, remember to keep your PC clean! Run Windows Defender, keep your system patched and up to date. Run a good anti-virus scanner from a known and respected vendor (such as Kaspersky, McAfee, etc).

Above all things, don't do dumb things with your computer. How many times have you heard "all my friends do this and they've never had a problem" ? Don't "just click OK". Don't believe every dialog you see.

The risks are real. Remember, there ain't no free lunch and Internet offers that seem too good to be true probably are. Don't be part of the problem.

Your own efforts will help cut down on these zombie PC's. Your network administrator will thank you for it.