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Are You A Spam Zombie?
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Author: Niall Roche
Topic: Spam
Viewed: 90 time(s)
[ Not Rated Yet ]
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Over the past few years you've all become familiar with the
terms spam, spam filter, whitelists, blacklists and a whole
myriad of other terminology associated with the problem of spam.
You now have to add a new and extremely worrying phrase to that
list - spam zombie.
With the net closing in around them spammers are looking for new
and more inventive ways to send out their junk email. Spam
filters and challenge response systems are becoming
progressively more intelligent and blocking more spam each day.
What was a spammer to do? The spammers took the next step -
infiltrating your PC and using it as a spamming tool.
When most of you think of the word zombie you're reminded of old
B movies with groaning zombies chasing the terrified actress
through a castle, swamp or whatever low cost setting the movie
revolved around. Spam zombies are, however, far more real and
far more dangerous.
A spam zombie is when your computer is taken over by a type of
virus called a Trojan. Once this Trojan virus is on your
computer it sets up an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)
application which allows it to begin sending email directly from
your PC to tens of thousands of victims. This all happens
invisibly in the background and can be difficult to detect for
even the experienced computer user.
How do these Trojans get onto your computer? As in most cases
they come from porn, warez or similar sites. One of the first
spam zombie trojans to appear became available via a link on
sites promising viewers free access to a porno webcam. One click
later and the Trojan is installed on your computer ready to send
out spam. Phatbot and Proxy-Guzu are two of the more common
Trojans used for the purpose of turning your computer into a
spam zombie.
How can you check if your computer has become a spam zombie?
Make absolutely certain that both your anti-virus and firewall
software have current detection signatures and have been
completely patched and updated. Working online without taking
these necessary security precautions is simply asking for
trouble.
Internet Service Providers are under huge pressure to quarantine
the IP address of any computer which has been turned into a spam
zombie. This is done on the basis that the ISP risks their
entire IP range being blacklisted or banned by some spam
filtering services or companies.
The very least you owe yourself is to run a full virus and
spyware scan on your computer today. You might be unpleasantly
surprised at what you'll find lurking there.
About the author:
This article provided courtesy of Spam-site.com which reviews spam blocker software and
other anti spam utilties.
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