Perhaps you missed the news: A teenager from Germany was indicted over the Sasser worm in early September. He also confessed to creating computer worm Netsky in May after being turned in by informants who wanted to cash in on a $250,000 bounty offered by Microsoft. So now the 18-year-old, with no previous criminal record, is facing the possibility of up to five years in prison.

I didn't see much about the indictment in the press. I didn't even address it in my column. I just felt that we've been subjected to so much bad news about viruses, spam, online identity theft and similar electronic security breaches that we're all going numb to the news. "Oh, that's just another virus story. Ho Hum."

But as we let our pens down on that one, the problem continues to grow. According to Symantec, spam now accounts for 65 percent of all e-mail. Viruses, such as Sasser, MyDoom, Bagle and new breeds of each, continue to pound users, getting ever more sophisticated. And new scams are reported daily, many of them involving e-mail and/or the World Wide Web.

The Federal Trade Commission says that one in every eight U.S. citizens has been an Identity theft victim in the last five years -- one out of 20 last year alone. The Internet and other rapid communications technologies are making it easier than ever for the scammers -- and harder than ever to stop.

Phishing, in which an e-mail tricks you into giving out personal information via a fraudulent Web site, is one of the growing concerns -- up more than 50 percent during the first half of this year, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group.

Now, phishers have found that they don't have to look 100 percent authentic as they pose as your bank or favorite online reseller. They simply have to look good enough and be able to get around spam filters. So they're often using common spammer tricks to avoid being filtered, fooling people well enough to victimize them.

Recently, I received a call from a worried reader, who said her identity had been stolen and that she had found out only when Dell Computer refused to grant her credit to purchase a new computer. According to this reader, Dell, when hearing her argument on the phone, actually accused her of posing as somebody else to make the purchase.

She subsequently obtained her credit report from the three big credit bureaus. But it'll be months -- or even years -- before she settles the problem and straightens out her credit rating.

Some people who follow technology news have been hoping that sender ID technology in e-mail would help reduce the problem. But the initial indications are that spammers and scammers are taking advantage of the technology themselves, reducing its value dramatically as an anti-spam mechanism and even making it a spammer's tool.

A number of Internet Service Providers have announced that they won't even support sender ID because the spammers have already caught on. Similarly, many users rely on sophisticated Bayesian filters to catch the problems on the way into their inbox. But the newest phishing techniques completely bypass even the best filters.

So don't get hardened to the news. Scams, spam and viruses will continue to plague you if you don't use best practices for e-mail, Web browsing and purchasing. I continue to provide those best practices at megabyteminute.com and keep you up to date in my columns. But the burden is on your shoulders -- to be vigilant and use those best practices. The scammers are working hard to victimize you. You need to make at least a small effort to foil their advances.