Most dangerous types of spyware increasing.

Quarterly review of consumer PCs shows triple digit growth in system monitors and Trojans; Total scans for 2004 top 4.6 million and detect 116.5 million instances of spyware and potentially unwanted software.

The most malicious forms of spyware, system monitors and Trojans increased in the last three months of 2004 according to the quarterly SpyAudit report, released today by EarthLink (NASDAQ: ELNK), a next generation Internet Service Provider and Webroot Software, a producer of privacy, protection and performance software. The report also documents the complete SpyAudit results for 2004. Results from the report, which tracked the growth of spyware on consumer PCs since the reports inception on 1st January 2004, show the instances of system monitors rose 230 percent, while the instances of Trojans rose 114 percent from October 2004 to December 2004. Trojans, keystroke loggers and system monitors are capable of capturing keystrokes, online screenshots and personally identifiable information like your bank account numbers, logins and passwords or credit card numbers.

The number of SpyAudit scans performed during the fourth quarter also rose with an increase of 72 percent from October 2004 through December 2004. In total for 2004, more than 4.6 million scans were performed, discovering approximately 116.5 million instances of spyware, adware or potentially unwanted software. An average of 25 traces were found per SpyAudit scan for 2004. The complete report is available at www.earthlink.net/spy audit/press.

"The audited numbers from the past year clearly show that spyware is rapidly becoming one of the Internets most dangerous threats," said Matt Cobb, EarthLink vice president of core applications. Utilising spyware detection applications like SpyAudit and amt-spyware solutions like EarthLink Spyware Blocker or Webroo's Spy Sweeper are an essential protection tool for any consumer who accesses the Internet. The huge increase in the presence of systems monitors and Trojans on consumer PCs is extremely disconcerting, said David Moll, Webroot CEO. These results are due in part to a substantial increase in the number of recently developed system monitors and Trojans that have been added to the SpyAudit, as well as the continuing infection rate as viruses, worms and freeware continue to propagate and install spyware.

The results from the SpyAudit report are culled from EarthLink and Webroot SpyAudit detection programs that run analyses of Internet users PCs and provide audited reports of spyware residing on the machines. The SpyAudit report charts the overall number of scans and figures for each of the defined spyware software categories from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2004.

Fourth Quarter Overall Results During the fourth quarter of 2004, 1,390,883 SpyAudit scans were performed.