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Let us use a familiar example.\u00a0You regularly exchange emails with your elderly mother who has a computer. Your mother uses Outlook or Thunderbird and has dozens of emails from you in her inbox. She even added you to her address book. She also has lots of emails from a distant family member \u2013 cousin\u00a0<\/em>Johan from Australia. You haven\u2019t stayed in touch with Johan that closely over the years, but you definitely know who he is.<\/p>\n Last year, just before the Christmas, Johan downloaded and installed this really pretty Christmas screensaver that showed tranquil tree and candle scenes when he wasn\u2019t using the computer. What he didn\u2019t know was that the screen saver had a sinister hidden payload. While the candles flickered peacefully on his screen, the software went to work combing through his emails and address book, his browser\u2019s cache of past webmail sessions and other files, storing every email address it would find in a separate list.<\/p>\n Then it sent the entire list to a server in Russia, where a criminal combined it with other such submissions to build the ultimate monster spam list that can be sold and resold over and over again.<\/p>\n But as if that wasn\u2019t enough, when the \u201cscreensaver\u201d sent the address list to Russia, it received some content in return \u2013 messages to be sent to all of Johan\u2019s contacts. Then, unbeknownst to John, his computer started creating hundreds of emails randomly using the harvested email addresses in the To: and From: field along with the content from the Russian server and sent them out using Johan\u2019s Internet connection. One of them used your mother\u2019s email address as sender and yours as recipient.<\/p>\n Now you received some spam from your mother asking you to buy fake watches and you\u2019re ready to speak to her telling her to stop. Well, don\u2019t. Your mother has obviously nothing to do with the whole thing and you\u2019ll never find out that it was actually Johan\u2019s computer.<\/p>\n You just had a look into the really nasty underworld of the Internet where\u00a0botmasters\u00a0<\/strong>(the guy in Russia) control\u00a0botnets<\/strong>\u00a0(infected computers that all report to the same server) of remote-controlled\u00a0zombies<\/strong>\u00a0(Johan\u2019s computer) that were compromised using\u00a0trojan horses<\/strong>\u00a0(the screensaver) or similar\u00a0malware<\/strong>.<\/p>\n And it doesn\u2019t even end there. The botmaster typically doesn\u2019t spam for his own account but hires out his botnet to whoever pays the most. The equally shady factory in China wanting to sell more fake Rolexes can now hire the botmaster to blast their offers all over the internet. The guy in Russia doesn\u2019t even care if you open or click on that email from your mother, he gets paid either way. And when he\u2019s done with the watches, he\u2019ll inform his entire mailing list that they all won the lottery and can pick up the prize if only they pay a small \u201ctransfer fee\u201d up front. And after that, he\u2019ll mail a Paypal phish for yet another \u201cclient\u201d. And for good measure, he\u2019ll sell his entire email address database, incl. yours, to a friend who is in the same line of \u201cbusiness\u201d.<\/p>\n In other words, once your email address got picked up by a\u00a0botnet<\/strong>, Pandora\u2019s Box is wide open. The whole scheme is particularly wicked because now you have to depend on others to keep your address safe. Unfortunately, there is little you can do:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [ARTICLE BY DAVID WILES & MATERIAL BY BustSpammers.com<\/a>]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n\n