When the infamous Rustock botnet was taken down, it helped reduce one third of all junk email being sent. Botnets are responsible for an average of 88% of all spam sent globally. For anyone new to the term, a botnet is essentially a network of infected computers (i.e. zombie computers) operated by criminal entities, which are programmed to perform malicious tasks or functions.

Though Rustock was ousted, new botnets emerge every year which is why it is so vital to keep your anti-spam software up-to-date.  As computers have become more sophisticated, so have the attacks against them. And, as broadband connections rise, so are the numbers of victims of malicious attacks. With the abundance of worms,  Trojans and viruses crawling our digital space through harmful botnets,  part of our responsibility in owning a computer is being aware of its vulnerabilities.