The nature of the computer virus has changed over the years. It used to be that the humble floppy disk was the vector for transmission. Now that has changed . The number one vector is email.

Over the last couple of years a number of people have been caught out by "Renewal Notices" for Australian .com.au domain names being sent out. Some of our customers lost their .com.au domain names because they paid a "renewal notice". The company took the money but soon after cashing the cheque went belly up. The result was that the domain name was not renewed and it lapsed. The flow-on was that the client's website went off air.

Spam used to just a nuisance. A little bit of junk email here and there. Hit delete and forget it. Now it is turning into a major headache. Some spam contains viruses. A lot is just plain fraud. The fraud ranges from spam proporting to be from your bank asking you to click a fake link to supply your net banking login and password, to the Nigerian scams, to advertising products that have doubtful claims.

A US federal grand jury in Detroit on the 3rd of January, 2008, indicted 11 people over a wide ranging international fraud. The people included: several Americans, a Russian and a man with Canadian and Hong Kong citizenship. The fraud involved spamming, sending out millions of messages in a "pump and dump" scheme.

The Federal government has come good with one of the promises that is to introduce mandatory Internet filtering. They want to introduce what's called a "clean" feed. People will be able to opt out. But will it actually solve the problem?