Security for Internet users deemed weak: Study

[The Hunter]

WASHINGTON — Internet users at home are not nearly as safe on-line as they believe, according to a U.S. inspection by researchers.

They found most consumers have no firewall protection, outdated antivirus software and dozens of spyware programs secretly running on their computers.

One beleaguered home user in the U.S. government-backed study had more than 1,000 spyware programs running on his sluggish computer when researchers examined it.

Full article here:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20041025.gtsafeoct25/BNStory/Technology/

[RACKnRAIL]

It is a sad world in which we live. It's too bad we don't have reasonable laws to protect us from these parasites instead of having to buy (buying optional of course) software to protect us. I think routers and firewalls should be built into computers of our near future. Just as M$ has incorporated their firewall into their latest security patch sp2...which most normal people wouldn't use anyway, but it is better than nothing for the average newbie. That's assuming they know how to do windows updates which I'm finding lots of people don't even do. So I guess your discovery is no surprize to anyone.