It's three in the morning - do you know what your computer is doing?

If you ask someone where spam mail is sent from, most people will probably describe an image of a stereo-typical server room. While a lot of spam mail is sent from servers sitting in racks, a good chunk of it isn't these days.

Rack space and servers cost money, and that cuts down on the profitability of a spam campaign. Why buy what you can steal? The act of sending junk mail is already arguable theft of services; many spammers take the next logical step and just hijack other people's computers to do their deeds.

The computer sending unsolicited email is as likely located in your own den as a server room someplace. Users are frequently tricked into installing malicious software that turns their computers into zombies doing their masters deeds.

The concept of tricking computers into sending massive amounts of email shows up a few times in the pre-history of spam. However, the probably has only become a persistent one in the last few years.

There are a number of ways to obtain protection against being exploited, but none are foolproof. Running firewall software that monitors outgoing connections can help verify your system isn't up to anything mischievous.

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