Read Microsoft Vice President of Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney’s informal comments and let me know how you feel about his comparison between malware infected machines effects on other PC’s and the effects of second hand smoke as a driving force for EPA regulations. This is like playing… hmm, nothing as complex as chess… maybe its more like Tic-Tac-Toe. When it comes to knowing when a Windows based PC or Server is threat to other computers Microsoft should be able to let us know. However, any mechanism they use to let us know – a network based ‘tweet’, a page shot to the print queue, or even a pop message on the users screen – will come under attack and the baddies will ensure that the feature does not work. It’s far easier to STOP a page from printing or to stop a PC from contacting a server than it is to make it DO those things in the first place.

Yesterday Panda Security announced the findings from a comprehensive identity theft study conducted by PandaLabs, the company’s malware analysis and detection laboratory. Based on the analysis of 67 million computers during 2008, PandaLabs revealed that 1.1 percent of the worldwide population of Internet users have been actively exposed to identity theft malware.

According to a new report from PandaLabs, less than 10% of all e-mail delivered in 2008 was legitimate. If that number seems low to you, go hug your mail administrator. Most Internet users do not really understand how e-mail works behind the scenes. Many people I deal with don’t fully grasp how difficult it is to walk the fine line between protecting e-mail users from unwanted mail while at the same time making sure legitimate messages arrive in their inboxes.