Spam (not the stuff from Hormel)

Click here to visit the folks that make the food-stuff that the email we will discuss is named after.

Have you noticed an increase in spam in your inbox? Last September Microsoft and Kaspersky managed to temporarily disable a botnet comprised of an estimated 45,000 computers. A botnet is a collection of compromised computers connected to the Internet (each compromised computer is known as a 'bot'). They could have removed the malicious software from the infected computers but apparently that is illegal. This botnet is called Kelihos.

Well, the bad guys have managed to reestablish control of Kelihos, and with 45,000 computers it sends an estimated 4 billion spam messages a day. It seems like most of it is directed to email servers I manage. You can get more details by clicking here.

So what can you do to block spam? There isn't a silver bullet, but here are some programs that can help.

SPAMfighter

MailWasher

As always, be aware of piggyback programs.