Guest Author - Debbie Jacobsen

The level of spam email activity usually rises around the holiday season, and this year is no exception. Last month, nearly 72 percent of total email sent through the internet was classified as junk email; commonly known as spam. This was an 8.5 percent increase over the prior month, and is the biggest one-month rise in spam since a 9 percent increase was seen in January 2006.

Spam activity is projected to keep on increasing, and there is no real way to stop it. Spammers make a lot of money off of the junk email advertisements they send out and until people stop buying, there is no incentive for the spammer to stop spamming. Spammers receive commissions on the products that they peddle, and even a small percentage of sales from a 10 million message campaign can generate huge profits. Believe it or not, enough people buy products from unsolicited email ads to keep spammers in business.

Professional spammers are gearing up for the holidays, and most of them are now utilizing large armies of “botnets” to send millions of spam emails out each day in an effort to rake in as many Christmas shopping dollars as they can. Spammers either own their own armies of “bots” or rent them from “bot herders” for the purpose of mass-emailing.

“Botnets” are groups remotely controlled computers (known as “bots”, which is short for “robots”) that have been secretly hijacked by hidden spyware. This spyware is secretly installed on your computer when you open an infected email attachment, download and install spyware-ridden free software, or visit unscrupulous websites. Most of the time antivirus software cannot detect this type of spyware, which is why spyware infections are so prevalent. It is estimated that nearly 80% of computers on the internet are infected with spyware.

Once a spammer or hijacker has succeeded in installing remote control spyware on an innocent victim’s computer, the PC is joined into a network of other slave computers. This network is called a “botnet”, and can consist of millions of hijacked computers all over the world. If the purpose of the botnet is for mass e-mailing (some botnets are used to attack other networks, or to host illegal websites), the spammer utilizes the slave computers to secretly send out millions of email messages.

Spammers use groups of hijacked computers to send out mass email mailings because it is very efficient and also keeps them from getting shut down. Since the “bots” are actually doing the spamming, spammers can usually steer clear of the law by using other people’s computers to do their dirty work. Home computers with broadband internet connections are the easiest to hijack because so many users fail to adequately protect themselves against the spyware that enables spammers to do their job.

In order to control spam, a two-fold approach is required. First of all, you should make sure you are not contributing to the spam problem by ensuring that your computer is not a part of a spam sending botnet. To do this, purchase a good anti spyware program and scan your computer for any instances of remote control software. You should also ensure that your antivirus software is up to date and perform a system scan. While you’re at it, use Windows Update to install every possible security update to Windows and Windows Explorer; this will “plug” any security holes that spyware uses to gain access to your PC.

After ensuring your computer is “clean” and free from spyware and viruses, it’s time to manage the amount of spam you get in your inbox. You can purchase a spam filter (such as ZapASpam for Outlook Express), or get a good computer security suite that includes antispam, antivirus and antispyware programs. Here is some information on various computer security suites available.