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Crikey Clarifier: Spam

11 June 2009 in Internet by Stilgherrian | 4 comments

Crikey logo

If you think spam is about selling the products being advertised, in most cases you’d be wrong. The real spam business is very different.

I’m in Crikey today with a Crikey Clarifier: What is spam and where does it come from? Amongst other things, I point out:

An estimated 94% of all email is spam: over 100 billion messages every day. Some of that is advertising by businesses who don’t realise it’s wrong or, imagining a sudden surge of business, don’t care.

But over 80% of spam is sent by fewer than 200 people using networks of “borrowed” computers called botnets. These zombie computers have been infected with a virus or Trojan horse that hands control of the computer to the bad guys.

It’s free for all to read.

Big Scary, Little Scary

07 March 2008 in Internet, Photography by Stilgherrian | No comments

Which of these images do you find the most frightening? Which the most beautiful? Which the most relevant to human existence?

Photograph of Epsilon15 Bacteriophage and the mould found growing under a computer monitor

On the left, the highest-resolution image of a virus ever taken. It’s the Epsilon 15 Bacteriophage (i.e. a virus which infects bacteria), and if you count viruses as being alive then it’s one of the most abundant forms of life on Earth.

On the right, a photo of what one guy found growing under his co-worker’s computer monitor. There’s a full image gallery. Hat-tip to Boing Boing.