You have heard me talk endlessly about good surfing practices, keeping your security programs up to date, not opening spam, etc. etc. Well, are all these precautions really necessary?

Security company McAfee thought they would find out. So it recruited 50 people around the world to throw caution to the wind and answer every email and popup they received. Some even gave out their postal address. provided the computer and email address that the participants used.

On average, each participant got about 70 spam messages a day. These included the familiar Nigerian scam, bank account fraud, medications, porn, “free” stuff, etc. Asking to be removed from the mailing list just made the daily deluge worse (because it confirms your email address is valid and active).

Those that gave out their home address saw an immediate avalanche of junk mail flooding their homes. One hacker tried to hijack the participant’s PayPal account. And their computers slowed down appreciably, as they became clogged with spyware and adware.

U.S. participants received the most spam, followed by Brazil, Italy, England and Australia. The most common emails were fake Chase.com. More details of this experiment will be released next week. In the meantime…. You guessed it ….. keep all your security programs up to date … always!

Syd Tash is a noted computer security consultant and author of How to Protect Your Computer Online. He has been keeping Internet surfers safe and secure since the last century. Find out how he does it; protect your own computer with five layers of protection right here: = > http://MyPCSecuritySite.com

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