Latest on home zombie PCs

One person commenting on a BBC piece today likened getting a high-speed Net connection more to getting a driver's license than having cable TV coming into your home. With the latter, you just turn the set on and start consuming; with the former you're only getting the privilege to figure out how to drive safely. Why the metaphors? Because so many families are now getting broadband Net access, many of them without understanding the (PC) security issues involved. Thus figures like this one cited by the BBC: 85% of email leaving broadband-connected homes is now likely to be spam - of course largely unbeknownst to those connected families who are inadvertently sending out that spam. Their PCs have become "zombies" - controlled by others, spam publishers, because the families don't know (or haven't been told by their Internet service providers) that they need firewalls (software like ZoneLabs.com's ZoneAlarm, free for personal use); constantly updated anti-virus software/service (like McAfee's or Symantec's); and timely downloads of Microsoft's ever-more-frequent "critical updates," or PC security patches.

Families' PCs become controlled by others when kids (or parents) mistakenly open attachments that contain "trojan" viruses that open up a "backdoor" and allow outsiders to take over their computers. Less often it's because someone has visited a Web site that sends software code to the PC which similarly takes control. At the bottom of the BBC piece are readers' own experiences with the zombie problem - you might find these helpful, or at least comforting. You're not alone (if you have a zombie on your hands); way too many of us are dealing with this problem. We wish broadband ISPs were doing a better job of informing their new customers about what the "driver's license" they're providing entails - though the BBC points out that ISPs are getting better about this, for the benefit of their own bottom line as much as for their customers. You'll find more on this in "What if our PC's a zombie?"