If you have used your email at all recently you have seen the blurred image prodding you to buy some hot, new stock. The pump and dump scam is the latest email scam presently inundating mail boxes across the planet and it has security experts worried.

This new scam promises that a cheap, usually American, stock is about to take off and you should get in before its to late. The scammer then dumps his/her stock as buyers leap in before it collapses.

This scam is different in that it uses an image to bypass anti-spam software and experts say that it could bring the internet to a virtual standstill by the end of this year. "Image spam" now represents 35 per cent of all junk email.

So why are these image scams so menacing to the Internet? The reason is Botnets! According to honeynet.com "A botnet is a network of compromised machines that can be remotely controlled by an attacker. Due to their immense size (tens of thousands of systems can be linked together), they pose a severe threat to the community."

Some researchers estimate about 10 per cent of the world's 650 million online computers are botnet victims. That's 65 million computers unknowingly sending out spam. They say this year has already shown just how large the networks are after one of the biggest crashed, resulting in a 30 per cent fall in spam for the week it was disabled.

There are many different uses for botnets but research has shown that the most common uses were criminally motivated or for destructive purposes. Botnets pose a serious threat. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are one such threat. Even a relatively small botnet with only 1000 bots can cause a great deal of damage.

What makes this so utterly astonishing is that people actually, after all that has been reported about spam, still fall for email scams. We know that morons are being deluded by this scam by watching the stocks. These almost worthless companies spike from almost no trades to two or three million when the spam is sent out. That means a lot of people fell for it.

Email scams continue to exist simply because they make money. Once they are no longer lucrative they will disappear. Its the only way to rid the world of this blight.

Now, if you will excuse me, there's a widow in Nigeria I need to send some money.