All around the world, tens of millions of computers under the control of cybercriminals, and, unknown to their owners, are used to send spam, distribute malware, and carry out identity theft.
Hi-tech criminals use botnets to send out spam, phishing e-mails and launch attacks on websites.
Botnets are often used to mount distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks - forcing websites offline - to run spyware or to send out spam emails.
It said the spyware tried to trick people into handing over their credit card details as well as installing software to send thousands of spam e-mails.
It lately has taken to shutting down groups and individuals who, Hoffman says, send spam e-mails to strangers just to build up their networks or take some of LinkedIn's revenue by recruiting other members without its permission.
It is easy to imagine how this information could be abused -- for instance, the hackers could send out spam emails to those users claiming to come from Evernote, and trick them into visiting a malicious website.
It aims to tackle those firms that send spam from one network but maintain their actual trading site on a reputable net operator.
Users who clicked on the links became vulnerable to programs installed on their computers that were designed to steal bank codes, send spam and engage in click fraud.
This classification is typically in the form of requesters asking you to sign up for services, register for events, click to sites, send email or notifications to others, and other actions to pad numbers of registrations or directly spam information.
As Kaspersky found out, it wasn't just scamware, but a trojan: the title would swipe the contacts after asking permission, send them to a remote server behind the scenes and text spam the daylights out of any phone number in that list.
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Some Twitter users were also starting to send out messages that are only about a product or service - effectively spam, said Mr Goad.
That means either educating the tiny fraction of consumers who do spend money in response to spam's marketing pitches, or making spammers pay to send their billions of e-mails.
By tackling the web shops that profit from spam, UK net firms hope to remove the financial incentive to send junk mail.
Just 44% of marketers surveyed believe their organizations were in compliance with the CAN-SPAM act, a law that requires marketers to request permission to send email messages, disclose the messages' source and offer an opt-out function.
For non-celebrities, the more common source of fake followers are spam bots which follow users in order to elicit a reciprocal follow, which then allows them to send spammy, direct messages to the Tweeter.
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