SPAM continues to bedevil e-mail boxes, with March levels still at 89.09 per cent of all e-mails scanned, according to UK-based SoftScan. The February level was 90.3 per cent. Virus levels continue to be low at about 0.6 per cent of e-mails.Still it is the virus that is going to cause havoc to your computer.

“One only has to look at the reports of the so called ‘spam king’ being sued by MySpace to realise that something is wrong with the system. If someone can be ordered to give back over $4 million for a previous offence and still go on to allegedly commit similar actions again, it shows that the punishment was by no means a deterrent,” said company chief technology officer Diego d’Ambra in commenting on the statistics. The top five virus families last month were, phishing (92.09%), Netsky (3.38%), Mytob (1.27%), Bagle (0.86%) and Stration (0.56%).

Meanwhile ESET’s ThreatSence.Net, which reports on data received from millions of computers around the world about detected attacks to users’ machines, said March’s statistics show that criminal malware continues to beset businesses. March’s data shows that malware is fairly evenly distributed with just a half a percent difference between the top five.

“Although it is obvious from the various payloads that the main objective is still to steal money or personal information, the fact that there is no clear leader in the top ten could indicate that malware writers think that a multi-layered approach is just as good a strategy for attack, as it is for defence,” the company said.

Out of the top 10 ranking threats, the Agent.NCC trojan made up about two per cent of all threats.

Detected as Win32/PSW.Agent.NCC, the trojan is used to steal passwords through key-logging.

Netsky.Q is second in the ranking, with a 1.77 percent detection rate. Netsky and its variants are some of the most prevalent families of malware around. The rest of the top ten threats in March were

• TrojanDownloader.Agent.AWF
• Win32/Adware.Boran
• Win32/PSW.QQRob
• WIN32/Adware.Yisou
• Win32/Perlovga
• Win32/Medbot.HF
• Win32/Nuwar.gen
• Win32/BHO.G.

More fearful stats. Webroot Software reports that 43 percent of companies surveyed globally have suffered a business disruption due to malware. Webroot research, using its Phileas automated spyware system, discovered that 1.7 percent (4.2 million) of 250 million URLs around the world harbour malware, software that installs on your computer and takes it over.

Meanwhile ClearMyMail claimed this month it is the first company to launch an online software filtering service with a guarantee to weed out all spam. The company has been testing its service for about a year and is now offering the 100-percent spam blocking guarantee to both home and business users.

ClearMyMail uses an 18-stage anti-spam and anti-virus filter system. It offers a free 30 day trial. After that its about $60 a year to keep the account. Go to www.ClearMyMail.co.uk for information.

The professional graphics users among us are probably going gaga over Adobe’s announcement this month of the details of its new package of software called Creative Suite 3. The package, which straddles the internet, film, portable devices, and of course print, is made up of 17 digital design programs. Adobe says it would allow a professional to create a TV commercial, then translate that into online video clips that can also be played on mobile phones and DVD. Users can then put together images, logos, and text to create a newsletter or magazine ad. Among the goodies being offered are upgrades of Adobe Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and of course Photoshop.

While they are reaching into their pockets for the $2,500 price tag, the rest of us can still be content with such free programs as Paint.NET and GIMP, which I have described in previous columns. GIMP takes a while to get to know, but like Photoshop if you really learn it you can really bash out some decent looking graphics. If you need software with design features and cannot pay for Illustrator, try Inkscape. CNet, which has a download site for all this free software, also recommends Primo PDF, if you want to create PDF files out of HTML documents, text pages or graphics.

A replacement for Adobe’s Dreamweaver (a Web page creation tool) is KompoZer, which the journal says is approaching the functionality of its expensive brethren. Check out the site’s “Roll your own Adobe CS3” for other freeware suggestions at www.download.com.

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Toronto-based Bioscrypt has released what it is calling industry’s first 3D face recognition security camera. The camera and software system can be used to authenticate users accessing computers, thus making passwords, tokens or cards unnecessary. After all passwords and cards can be stolen, yet a face is more difficult to duplicate unless one of your employees has a twin. The 3D DeskCam connects via USB interface to a desktop or laptop. Bioscrypt expects to begin shipping during the second half of 2007. See what it can do at www.bioscrypt.com. Yahoo plans to offer unlimited e-mail storage to its roughly quarter of a billion users, starting in May.

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Yahoo has finally yielded to the competition, going further by scrapping its free e-mail storage limit of one gigabyte. Microsoft has a two gigabyte limit.Google tops out at 2.8 gigabytes. I expect the other two services will also uncap even those limits as everyone now begins to archive everything online. It’s all a matter of trust, but can we trust the keepers of all this data? With the example of Yahoo’s recent behaviour in China (it released information on a citizen journalist to the authorities) I don’t think so. But by default the services are so convenient that I continue to store my life online. Yahoo said it will also examine whether to lift the storage cap on its photo sharing service Flickr.

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