I just bet Dean Drako, the CEO of anti-spyware/spam vendor Barracuda Networks , $5 that within five years all of our important network connections will be made over secure connections. Dean disagrees. He thinks it will take longer than that.

The issue came up last week when we were discussing spyware at Interop in Las Vegas - Drako's company will incorporate spyware detection in its anti-spam firewall products - and I contend that the spyware problem is growing at a pace that exceeds the rise of any previous threat. It will make spam and viruses look, at best, second-rate threats and cause lost productivity on a scale so great that we will have to change the way we communicate.

My argument is founded on the fact that spyware already has become a huge problem. Depending on whose figures you believe, spyware is installed on 60% to 70% of all corporate PCs and is responsible for at least half of all PC crashes and about one-fifth of all support calls.

If you haven't experienced the joys of spyware, just wait, you will. I've been wrestling with spyware on my laptop on and off for the last couple of months. On start-up, an Internet Explorer window pops up on top of every other window titled "My Search Page," and it is very hard to kill off. Until you click on a link, you can't escape it, and after you do, you will be subjected to pop-up ads every few minutes. I've run every spyware tool I can find to try to remove or at least identify the software, but so far no luck. Any advice you might have would be interesting.

The fact that spyware already is a major headache was obvious at Interop - the number of vendors with anti-spyware products was remarkable, and along with wireless technology it was one of the show's biggest themes.

New answers

I saw several interesting anti-spyware products. AbsoluteSafe from start-up Zeroday Security is a small box that is connected to your PC by a USB cable and features a single switch and a red light. When the red light is on, your PC is protected and no software can be added to the system. Flip the switch, your PC can be updated. The hardware won't be available until later this summer and don't bother looking at its Web site for a while because not only is the site awful, it tells you less than I just did.