Put it this way, you only worry about your government enforcements if you're planning to install/setup mail server since spammers will detect and take advantage to secretly use your mail server and you have to take all responsibilities for their actions; for example, a couple years ago, my best friend was in FBI's custody for investigation if he's a spammer just because he installed a mail server to run his testing scripts a couple times and when he's done w/ his script, he completely forgot about the mail server; as a result, a couple months later, FBI knocked his door and took him into custody

Or you might worry about hackers only if you will be hosting websites that contain sensitive information such as credit cards or need secure transactions. On the other words, if you don't have mail server or sensitive information, most spammers and hackers, if not all, don't waste their time on your pc

For example, I have 3 servers running 24/7 since 2005 and they're all online for worldwide access. At first I was using either Norton or McAfee since other firewall/antivirus cause problem to run wamp, I mean at that time. From the beginning, I'm running windows, wamp, mcafee, ftp server, and mail server, but after my best friend's incident, I paid more attention to my spammer black list and found out that it's growing very quick everyday, so I decided to take down mail server since it's very tired to keep track and update mail security's everyday to prevent spammers; and don't get me wrong, if you like to have your own mail, it's your call

BTW, don't be surprise that nowadays I'm running only windows, wamp and ftp server and don't even have firewall/antivirus at all

because I only use these servers to run wamp and ftp server, but never use them for any other normal everyday compute needs
Have fun,
FREE One A DayFREE PhotoFREE GamesFREE WebsitesFREE Portable GPSFREE WAMP GuidesEdited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/2009 03:37PM by yfastud.