The Average PC is Infested with Spyware

WoodenRobot writes "This article claims that Earthlink have discovered that the average user's PC has 28 spyware programs on it. More details can be found on Earthlink's spyware auditing page." Compare to a university study. The FTC is hosting a Spyware Workshop.

Comments

Agreed.

[Denyer]

Of the three systems I've sorted out in the last few days, all had some form of infestation. The two with Windows 2000 were worst affected, with spyware auto-inserting itself through browser exploits. The much older Win98 SE machine wasn't infested with anything nearly as nasty, most of it due to user error.

Whilst out-of-the-box, Windows 2000 is a fairly stable OS, it's frighteningly insecure.

Re:Lets hear your records...

[Tycho]

Here is a super secret website to make Windows ME more stable:

http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

Installing IE 6 helps Windows ME out a great deal. For that matter most of the other updates are useful too. Still though even with these updates, I would rather have a machine with 98SE, 2000, or XP Pro on it. Oh yeah, to keep this on topic I had a 98SE machine that locked up after booting because it had so much spyware. I am currently installing XP Pro on a new hard drive for this machine. I still can't get the owner of the machine to at least try to avoid installing spyware.

Re:Good effort to fight spam and malware

[swv3752]

Mine is to suggest Linux, but essentially the same thing.