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Viruses and Spyware Cost Users Billions

According to a Consumer Reports survey, consumers paid as much as $7.8 billion over the last two years to repair or replace computers infected with viruses and spyware. While the figure is down from a similar survey a year ago, the newer survey shows that people are still paying a high price to deal with those problems. The magazine found that spam e-mail is the biggest computer-security problem; however, viruses are the most expensive, with a price tag of $5.2 billion in 2004 and 2005 to repair or replace infected computers. Consumers also reported losing $630 million in 2004 and 2005 to phishing scams, the fake e-mails and Web pages that ask for private information such as account numbers and passwords.