Blocking Spam & Spyware

The book I read to research this post was Blocking Spam & Spyware for Dummies by Peter Gregory et al which is an excellent book which I bought from amazon. At one time spam was just dodgy messages but the dividing line between spam, spyware & viruses has blurred rather a lot. I think spammers think if they can get their spam onto your computer they might as well make money from you ie find your bank details, and they might as well cause some mayhem. As time goes on anti virus, anti spamware & anti spyware will merge into one program. One trick they use with spam is to send a picture, often pornographic, with no separate text so as to fool the anti spamware. For a business spam is a real concern if employees are bombarded with pornography & other nasty things via spam & the firm isn't doing enough to protect them they can sue the company. Anti spamware will either filter spam too much or too little that is a fact of life. A concern with spyware is it can be a key logger & record all your keyboard commands including potentially your bank details & passwords. One problem with many anti spyware programs is they allow your computer to become infected before they remove it, some now scan for it & remove it straight away. If you run a business you should have these types of anti malware on your servers & separately on your workstations. Another issue is employees putting software on their workstations especially stuff off the internet which can potentially contain malware.