Alex Eckelberry, the president of Sunbelt Software, has written an excellent article about the Julie Amero case. Alex writes:

“The machine was a haggard old system that was not adequately protected against these types of threats (Windows 98 running Internet Explorer 5 with only middling antivirus protection, no firewall, no antispyware program, no popup blocking and no up-to-date Internet filtering in place). Put a system like that against the Internet, and it has no chance.”

Julie Amero faces a possibility of forty years in jail. This never should have been a court case in the first place. Perhaps the prosecutor of this case can spend ten minutes online, without a firewall and without an antispyware program, and then look to see what junk is on his machine.

[Catherine Forsythe, Director of Operations, FlyingHamster]

[tags]child porn, spyware, virus, malware, julie amero, FlyingHamster, Catherine Forsythe[/tags]