For all of you who have wondered why you’ve been getting more spam lately, it’s because of bots and zombies.

Really — that not just some silly Halloween joke. Millions of computers out there are infected with viruses and/or spyware that actually runs software without the computers’ owners knowledges in order to spam people. This means that your computer could be sending you spam, if you don’t have up-to-date virus scanning software.

It’s scary to think that millions of people’s computers are being controlled, like zombies, by other people, sending out spam and even attacking some web sites with tons of simultaneous traffic (Denial of Service attacks).

For those of you who have ever actually responded to a piece of spam (”this stock is going to skyrocket! it’s just too g00d 2 b3 tru3!”), you are responsible for this. If no one clicked on spammers’ emails, spammers wouldn’t do any good and would go out of business.

You can read more of what real security experts have to say on the increase in spam at www.securityfocus.com/news/11420/.