Answer Line: Why do I get so much spam?

Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Carol asked why there's so much of it. Why are there so many unwanted, tricky, manipulative, annoying, dangerous, and often illegal email messages going around? Because unscrupulous people can make a tidy profit mailing Spam. In 2010, Gmail spam expert Brad Taylor told Wired that “It costs $3,000 to rent a botnet and send out 100 million messages. It takes only 30 Viagra orders to pay for that.” [Email your tech questions to answer@pcworld.com or post them on the PCW Answer Line forum.] Botnets--illegal networks of infected computers controlled by people other than their legitimate owners--make an important part of the spam equation. Not only do they send out a great deal of spam, but their owners use spam to infect more computers, and thus grow their botnets. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here