Hi. I've always seen the importance of having an anti-virus system running, keeping out backdoor trojans and trojan horses. But the thing is, if the anti-virus is stopping things like backdoor trojans from executing, then how much of a risk is there of someone hacking into your computer? The only ports open on my computer are the typical pop3 smtp ports, and if someone can reach your file system through them (then they're bloody good) then they must be quite professional and looking for certain things, i.e. bank details e.t.c. Which I don't keep on my computer anyway. I can't see why someone would take all that time to hack someones computer just to mess it up. So, with a descent anti-virus, how easy is it to hack into someones computer? Thanks. Daniel Ashley-Smith London, U.K

Is the windows firewall turned on? If not turn it on. If you have no firewall at all, the small problems are getting a virus/trojan/worm. The problem that you should really worry about is allowing someone to have complete access and control of your computer. A lot of spam is sent out by computers that are controlled by a bad guy. The actual owner has no idea it is even happening. A compromised computer becomes a "bot", that under complete control by an outsider. It can be used for a denial of service attack, spam, whatever the bad guy wants. If you do not want to protect yourself, please protect the rest of us that are using the internet.

I forgot to answer your question about how easy it is to do. It is unbelievably easy, and they do not even have to write a code to do it. They can just copy the code from a website that hacker like to frequent. The average time that it takes to compromise a system is down below 10 minutes now, if you are using high speed internet like adsl, dsl, etc. Check this site to to learn how to develop your own search engine; http://www.searchlores.org/bots.htm

A fire wall will let you know if a bug is trying to call home if you have been infected. Just as important is keeping you windows update d if you don't run a good AV, Fire wall and keep windows updates current you will be infected !

The trouble with AV programs is that they need to be totally up to date. If you get an unknown trojan or whatever on your system the AV may not notice it but a firewall will stop it from accessing the outside world without your knowledge. A decent, unobtrusive firewall will not cause any slow-down or major resource use to your system and is a small price to pay for the protection it provides. Many AV programs, on the other hand, are very resource hungry and I would argue that a firewall is far more important than many AV programs. "I know that I'm mad, I've always been mad"