According to F-Secure, a Finnish security vendor, the number of malware code exploded in 2007. In the past twenty years, there have been around 250,000 pieces of code tracked and sampled. This year alone, there were another 250,000 pieces of code.

There are many possible reasons for this, not the least of which hackers may be trying to flood the Internet with malicious code and overwhelm ever-more efficient anti-virus companies. So far, AV companies have kept ahead of the surge.
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Now more than ever, we need to have updated anti-virus software running on our computer. Even if you haven't been infected yet, the odds are stacking up against you to continue to surf the Internet or check e-mail without becoming infected.