From texters to spammers . . .

The Philippines is the second biggest source of spam messages in the Asia Pacific Region and Japan, this according to the Internet Security Threat Report of renown anti-virus outfit Symantec.

Our consolation is that we were edged out by Uzbekistan from being number 1. The Symantec report revealed that our personal computers are hosting spam zombies that are manipulated by hackers to perform malicious attacks toward unknown users, by sending bogus messages which aim to paralyze a service or crash a network and infect it with “bot,” a search-engine supporter that digs out information in a web site for future indexing. Spams are rampant because of the growth of broadband usage, number of internet cafés, gamers online, small and medium enterprises and average computer users, the report added.

Pinoys, especially the young ones have found another way of making money the easy way by acting as accomplice of professional underground attackers. Once the quota on email sent is reached, spammers get paid.

For the unsuspecting internet users out there, take extra precaution - by installing or updating your anti-virus and anti-spyware; and be wary of unsolicited emails.

Ours is a remittance-driven economy

The assertions of our economic managers that the Philippine economy has strong economic fundamentals and that explains why GDP has grown by 7.5% as of the second quarter of 2007, is half-true. The other reason why our economy remains afloat is the dollar remittances of our 8 million strong OFWs.

These remittances estimated at about a billion dollars a month sustain the purchasing power of at least one-fourth of our population; contribute largely to our burgeoning dollar reserves; and create a huge demand for housing and subdivision development.

If we can sustain the growth attributed to our OFWs, we are on our way to rebuilding the socio-economic and political structure of our society. By economically emancipating the families of OFWs, we are in effect, building a strong middle class that cannot be coerced and intimidated by unscrupulous and power-hungry politicians.