Sophos reports that 50% of all Windows PCs connected to the Internet are infected within 12 minutes of them being wired to the Web. This applies to all Windows PCs that have no serious anti-virus protection and an active firewall.

According to the same company, 7,944 new viruses were released in the first half of 2005, with a nearly 60% increase over the previous year.

That is indeed pretty bad news by itself, but what I find absolutely stunning is the amount of people I know who have plenty of viruses, spyware, and malware on their computers and they don’t even know it.

The same survey in fact found 77 percent of users believing their home computers are either very safe (28 percent) or somewhat safe (49 percent) from online threats.

So, how can you tell whether you are really safe or not?