If you think you’re getting a lot of spam these days, well, you are not alone. Microsoft has released a report that says 97 % of mail that is being sent is unwanted spam like phishing attacks or viruses.
The good news: Spam filters are getting better than ever. Microsoft’s filter system for Exchange now scrubs out 39 out of every 40 emails sent. Spam also saw that slight decline thanks to the shut down last year of the ISP McColo, a major haven for spammers who suddenly had to go shopping elsewhere.

What are we being spammed about? Pharmacy and other product ads make up the lion’s share of spam, accounting for 72.2 percent of all spam sent. Only 10 % of that is for Viagra or Cialis. Image-only spam, dating come-ons, financial spam, and fraudulent diplomas round out the remainder of the most common spam subjects.
In the related world of malware infections, the Microsoft report noted that worldwide, 8.6 machines were suffering from malware for every 1,000 which were clean. That sounds pretty good, but it still translates to about 9 million computers worldwide suffering from malware attacks. What do you need to watch out for today, attack-wise? The most common attacks at the moment target Microsoft Office and PDF files, and those types of attacks are further on the rise.

Is your computer protected? The only way to stay ahead of these spammers is to keep all your softwares up to date and keep your Anti virus up to date as well. If you don’t have one I encourage you to buy a real anti virus. I use Pareto Logic anti virus. One worry out of my way.

Do you do affiliate marketing? Do you drive pay-per-click traffic to your websites or landing pages? Then you have to read the following story. I belong to a private forum where most of the members are affiliate marketers. They drive PPC traffic specifically Google Adwords traffic. Of late a few of them had their Adwords account hacked into. One person had his account hacked into and the credit card charges was something like 17k! Credit cards were maxed out and his account was paused by Google.

image by prasan.naik

He contacted Google and it took Google a few weeks to resolve the issue.  If your livelihood depended on affiliate marketing and PPC traffic from Google imagine how difficult those few weeks will be for you. One way of avoiding these type of incidents is having a very strong password. When I say strong I really mean very very strong. I change my password for these type of accounts very frequently as well. And these passwords are unique and not used for anything else. I have a software program that generates random passwords for me in a second. I can set the length of the password to as long as I want as well. Makes it harder to hack into. The program I trust and use is Roboform. Even if you are not affiliate marketer but use Google Adwords to drive traffic to your site please remember to have a strong/unique password and change it often. To save time and hassle use a program to automate the process. It will only take you a few minutes to do the process.

The benefits of Roboform are quite a few:

• Manage your passwords and Log In automatically.
• Fill long registration and checkout forms with one click.
• Encrypt your passwords to achieve complete security.
• Generate random passwords to maximize password strength.
• Fight Phishing by entering passwords only on matching web sites.
• Defeat Keyloggers by not using the keyboard to type passwords.
• Back up your passwords and copy them between computers.
• Synchronize passwords between computers using GoodSync.

RoboForm Password Manager is:

• Portable: RoboForm2Go runs from USB key, no install needed.
• Phone-friendly: sync your passwords to Windows Mobile and Palm.
• Universal: works with Internet Explorer, AOL/MSN, Firefox.
• IE 7 and Vista are fully supported.

So if you have accounts where security is high priority (which should be for all your online activities) please have a strong password and change it often to avoid keyloggers. Use a program like Roboform to protect yourself against any hacking or phishing scams.