The dynamic duo that helped uncover a possible Mideast cyber-terror connection, in a podcast focusing on "botnets" talks about a new breed of web criminal threatening ecommerce. Wayne Porter and Chris Boyd, whose job is to spend their days infiltrating rings of cyber criminals, areinterviewed by Jeff Molander and discuss a phenomenon more harmful to ecommerce than phishing.

Porter and Boyd discuss malware that enslaves PCs, installs adware - and is capable of scraping users' credit cards from shopping cart screens. Moreover, the program propagates itself using instant messaging.

Porter warns e-marketers that participate in the shadier networks that deal in adware: "If merchants continue to fund and participate, knowingly or unknowingly, in these channels they're polluting the very environment in which we do commerce…eventually the lake becomes so polluted that nobody wants to swim in it anymore."