Hi Guys

I have only just come across this thread, being ill with the flu, and found it very interesting. And I would like to throw my meager knowledge into the arena.

First of all, until recently installing WinXP would, by default, open most if not all (65,353) ports on your PC. This makes your PC light up on the internet like a lighthouse lights up the night. Any hacker with the right tools can seek out, find these unprotected machines and plant Trojans or viruses on them.

Now, remember a couple of years ago the sasser worm virtually ripped through every unprotected PC on the internet, every PC that got infected went on to broadcast more replicated worms onto the internet to infect other PCs.

My current PC is now three years old but last year I found pre-installed spyware on it, files that were there before I bought the machine. Now Peerless will confirm that we had a conversation where he informed me that PCs were being sold with pre-installed spyware, I was shocked at this piece of knowledge but my own findings confirmed what Peerless wrote.

What's more that spyware I found included something called "SendMail" and "Kazaa Lite"

Putting all the above together and it is quite possible that a new machine without any protection would be open to the world. And when you think of it, how many people know anything about the PC they have bought and connected to the internet. I mean, we have seen it time and time again in this very forum that the majority of people know very little about the computers that they buy and use.

Finally, although Andy's story may be fantastic but, based on my own knowledge, it is entirely possible that there are people out there without protection whose PCs are wide open and visible on the internet.





UK Bob