Once upon a time, Mac users could brag they were much safer from malicious electronic attacks. After all, in the days before Google (GOOG), when Microsoft (MSFT) was the only uber-player in town, Windows was the perpetual malware target. Phishers, however, aren't discriminating; they're just looking for an account to plunge. So, both Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft users are threatened. Virus writers do tend to focus on the Windows operating system, which owns 90% of the OS market, but phishers are platform independent.

Phishing involves attempts to get a user to reveal information about their accounts. Once the soon-to-be victim clicks that link or fills out a form, the "transaction" is complete -- no operating system interaction necessary. As a result, there really isn't any advantage to using a Mac over a PC.

Who needs venture capital money when you have litigation? Facebook was awarded $711 million in damages Thursday in an anti-spam case against Sanford Wallace, an internet marketer. The popular social networking platform went after Wallace for tapping its users' accounts without their permission and sending fake posts and messages.

Wallace has quite a reputation for spamming, having gained the nicknames "Spam King" and "Spamford" back in the 1990s, when he was good for up to 30 million spam e-mails a day.

One of the wonderful things about the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) Mac and its operating system was that, because so few people used them, they were not an attractive target for hackers. Apple used that fact to market itself as an alternative to Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows, which is constantly fending off bugs.

All of that is changing now that computer users actually buy Macs and use Apple's new OS. The FT quotes Patrik Runald, an F-Secure security researcher, as remarking: "Over the past two years, we had found one or two pieces of malware targeting Macs. Since October, we've found 100-150 variants."

Now Apple will have to spend a lot of programmer time working on hacks the same way that Microsoft does.

The Apple hacking army is lead by a group called the "Zlob gang." It appears that they are very good at getting consumers to download software for things like watching video. All the person really gets is a virus.

It is a shame that the Mac is so successful. Now Apple will have to spend endless hours in a chess game with hackers.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

When Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) says "Don't be evil," is the company just talking, or does it meant what it says? When it comes to actually dominating the world's information (which is its goal, make no mistake), it's hard to do that and not be evil.

But, when it comes to ridding its web index of malicious websites that could infect a user's computer with viruses or other malcontent, Google is doing global web searchers a solid. Just because a web result lands in Google's index does not mean there isn't something dangerous lurking on that website that could exploit your PC in the worst possible way -- perhaps without you even knowing it.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has had a good time recently nipping at the heels of what many consider its largest enemy -- Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). While I'm not agreeing that Microsoft is in Google's direct cross-hairs more than other companies, the area of customer security and privacy is one area where both companies have taken potshots at one another recently. Google has taken criticism for the immense privacy breaches it apparently is making available to the world, while Microsoft's Windows operating system and other software constantly have security issues, from malware to spyware.

Google recently posted an entry to its security blog that lists the most common web servers that are used to host malware, which then gets distributed to consumer PCs -- turning them into "zombies" for illegal online activity. Yes, you guessed it -- Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) was listed along with the Apache web server (which runs the free Linux operating system) as responsible for distributing 49% of all malware on the internet. You probably know malware -- it's what is responsible for those annoying popups on many millions of PCs, and it generally slows down a PC significantly or crashes it altogether.

Now, to be fair, Google did list the open-source Apache web server as responsible for hosting and distributing malware on the internet as well, so I don't think this was a direct attack on Microsoft, but more as a statement of fact.

But, Google did take its analysis further and determined that Microsoft's server software was actually responsible for distributing malware twice as much as the Apache web server software. While this will not come as a surprise to many IT professionals, it seems that Google could have a motive of undermining trust in Microsoft's products by using published research and analysis showing weakness. Well, it's free to do that, and perhaps Microsoft could turn the tables on Google and point out weakness in the company's software -- except that Google does not make software for web servers.

Sometimes, the use of Google's many products have unintended and good side effects. Case in point: Google's search engine alone is being used to identify and track the activity of malicious websites. You know, the websites that attempt (and often succeed) in dropping viruses and malware onto the computers of unsuspecting web surfers?

Online security vendor WebSense has been using Google's capability to actually search through and index the binary executable programs (.EXE for you Microsoft OS vets out there) to identify strings of binary data that actually harmful and destructive computer code. These pieces of code and actual programs sit in the background of many websites waiting for any and all visitors to show up -- and then they usually and silently install something on the visitor's computer that is, well, not a good thing.

On the flip side, some smart hackers (there are plenty of those) could manipulate they way they drop malware onto web surfers' PCs by including search terms in their executable programs and also by trying to work around the Google capability of having their programs indexed and identified as malicious. Just like prolific email spammers, hackers will always try to find a workaround to ensure their criminal activity can continue unabated. It seems Google can create the most helpful search systems in the world at the same time making it possible for computer criminals to propagate their nastiness on an unprecedented scale.