Question 1. WordPress users – all of a sudden I’m getting loads and loads of spam comments — 536 overnight. This is despite the fact I don’t USE WordPress for the commenting here (yet). I’m still on version 1.5.2, which spam plugin is best?

Question 2. XP users – I think I have a virus. The internet ‘outage’ I experienced the other night may have been a symptom and there is SOMETHING that is using a variety of outgoing TCP Ports. But I can’t figure out what it might be.

I’ve udpated and run AVG Anti-Virus, SpyBot and Ad-Adware. My firewall is Symantec and isn’t reporting anything odd, it’s only when I call up netstat via DOS prompt (“netstat -s”) that I see the number of “Active Opens” rising. I’ve just re-booted the PC, fired up Firefox and started typing this post and already the number is at 61.

I’m stumped. I can’t even think of what to look for, and if my anti-virus can’t catch it, the firewall isn’t flagging it (despite changing settings to ask for every teeny tiny movement in and out to be flagged), what else can I do?

The comment: Andy and I have swapped emails and I’ll happily state here that he did not mean anything nasty. Looks like it was a combination of bad days and misreadingness. All is well with the world again (bar the above, obviously).