Malware can be a serious problem, causing your computer to lose files, distribute personal information, or even be used as a bot by hackers and spammers. You’ve probably seen advertisements for software to clean these malicious programs off of your computer, but many of those advertisements are disguises, so that you’ll actually download Malware! Here’s how to avoid Malware, how to tell if you have it, and how to take care of it once you know it’s there.

To avoid Malware, be careful about opening links or attachments, especially from pop-up ads or in emails from unfamiliar sources. You can get malware by carrying a flash drive computer to computer; windows has a feature, “autorun, that automatically opens executable files when you plug in storage devices. Autorun makes it very easy for malware to spread from machine to machine, so you may want to disable it in your Windows settings as an additional way of protecting your machine.

Symptoms of malware include slowdowns, official-looking fake warnings for anti-spyware and anti-malware programs, and excessive pop-up windows. You want to keep an eye out for any significant changes in performance. If you think you have malware, quarantine your computer. You should also quarantine any removable devices that could be carrying the malware. To quarantine hardware, remove it from all networks and any connection with writable storage devices. Keep hardware quarantined until it’s clean.

Get trustworthy, real anti-malware software; research programs before you run them. Some good programs are McAfee, Trend, Symatec, and Malwarebytes. Each has a different library of malicious programs that it looks for, so if possible, run several of these one after another. Anti-malware programs will also make some repairs to your computer if needed.

In a worst case scenario, you will have to completely clear your computer and re-install. Unfortunately, that’s the only way to know for sure malware is gone; new viruses come out every day, and though anti-malware programs update constantly, they aren’t perfect. However, by taking these simple precautions, you minimize your risk from spyware and malware.

From a business perspective, you want to offer your customers every opportunity to use your services, while at the same time maintaining good business ethics. However, it’s not always easy to see the difference between sending helpful offers to interested customers, and sending spam. This is illustrated by a number of ambiguous lawsuits about spam that have been through the courts.

Australia and Great Britian both passed bills that put limitations on mass commercial mailings in 2003, and Canada passed an anti-spam bill in 2000. The United States followed suit, signing the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pormongraphy and Marketing Act (the Can Spam Act, for short)into law in 2004. So now that the majority of the english speaking world is placing limitations on spam, how do we tell exactly what spam is? According to the Can Spam Act, all commercial emails must include the sender’s physical address. They must also include instructions on how to opt out of future mailings. Lastly, using false headers and subject lines is strictly illegal.

The ambiguity comes up because some practices are widely regarded as rude, but are not illegal. There are some rules you might consider adopting simply as a matter of courtesy. Following these is likely to gain you good will (or at least make it so that you don’t gain enemies) in the online world. Don’t post commercial links at blogs or newsgroups where they won’t be welcomed by the owners of the site, even if you think you’re likely to get traffic from them. If you’re going to include commercial links, make sure they’re relevant to the site where you are posting, and embed them in a legitimate content contribution that will be appreciated. You should also make sure you always keep your mailing lists up to date.

Following these practices will not only keep you on the right side of the law, it will build you goodwill among your customers and improve your reputation in the internet community at large.

When most people think of terrorism, they think of bombs or anthrax. In Estonia in 2007 the world witnessed a new kind of attack. Some people call the incident “the Estonian Cyberwar;” to others, it’s “Web War I.”

Nestled between the gulf of Finland and the Baltic sea, Estonia is a surprisingly technology rich place. With one of the most vigorous economies in Eastern Europe, it managed a spectacular recovery from the fall of the Soviet Union, and succeeded in joining the European Union in 2004. Despite this, tensions between Russia and Estonia—as with many other portions of the former Soviet Union—run high. In this case, those tensions flared up over the removal of a Soviet-era Russian military monument, which some Estonians considered a matter of national pride.

So what exactly happened? In short, lots and lots of spam. If it sounds trivial, be assured it is not. Most of the Estonian cyberattacks were “DDOS” or “Distributed Denial of Service” attack. DDOS attacks basically work by sending so much spam that all legitimate internet traffic is blocked. DDOS attacks use networks of computers hacked from unsuspecting users to generate massive amounts of spam traffic. The method is crude, and it’s low-tech for hacking, but it is also incredibly effective and difficult to combat. The DDOS attacks in Estonia managed to paralyze Estonia’s entire internet infrastructure.

One of the most interesting aspects of this conflict is that it sets a pattern for the future. Compared to physical combat, cyber attacks are easy to engage in and hard to trace. While Russia was the obvious direction to point fingers, now—three years later—we are still unsure exactly who committed these crimes. Ip addresses from some of the first attacks lead to Russian government buildings, but there’s not enough evidence to be considered conclusive. These actions were so inexpensive and accessible that they may have even been carried out by an informal network of Russian hackers working on their own.