Is your antivirus software current

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You do have antivirus software installed and running, right? Moreover, you do keep its pathogen database regularly updated, right? We can't emphasize the importance of this enough. Broadband users in particular are subject to attacks for viruses and similar pathogens. We once contracted a worm based on software put out by distributed.net. This little application, all but invisible save by looking at the processes list in the Windows Task Manager, brought our system to a near halt because it sucked up every available CPU cycle to work on solving a highly complex contest problem, reported its work back to the hacker's remote system, then downloaded a new batch of data to crunch. Broadband users are favorites of hackers because their always-on Internet connection ensures that pathogens can be quickly transmitted to other systems with which the user is in contact.

Always-on connections are also favorites of hackers wanting to recruit zombie machines for mounting a DoS (denial of service) attack at some victim. In these cases, your PC is implanted with a tiny bug that, at a certain predetermined or external signal, will execute, lock out the system user, and launch a flood of data at a target site. With hundreds or thousands of such zombies working in concert, even the world's largest sites can be effectively shut down.