Sure, maybe I've got some sort of virus/trojan/spyware. It must be a particularly nasty one too, there's no noticeable spike in network traffic (so I must be spamming), nothing picked up by the IDS (from all those malicious port scanning and network attacks going on), no pop-ups (making them lots of money), nothing picked up by clamav on my fileserver (not infecting things allows it to spread more effectively) nor any changes in the md5 hashes of the vital system files and directory listings I monitor (allowing it to truly root my system).

Oh, and my router doesn't support uPnp.

Of course, you could play the card that it's possible it has so effectively rooted my system that the on-system checks (md5 hashes/listings) are compromised, and it doesn't perform any activities that would allow the other machine to pick it up.

But I'm not playing possibilities here, I'm playing probabilities. I find the chance that I've been infected by a piece of malware that would slip under my radar sufficiently low as to be acceptable. Consdering the one or two infections I have let slip by (by running executables I really shouldn't have) have been picked up almost instantly.

Especially considering how ridiculously ineffective most modern AV programs are and how much they negatively effect system performance. Merely monitoring the hash of vital system files and keeping an eye on changes in the list of files in Windows\System32 will probably be more effective.

But hey, what do I know.

"There are a few things that should be off-limits though:
Race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, place of birth, etc."

Err, despite being politically incorrent, using religion and place of birth is probably a good idea.

How many Buddhists have blown things up? How many Taoists?

How many Christians? How many Muslims?

How many people born in Canada have gone abroad to blow things up?

How many people born in the middle east have gone abroad to blow things up?

Hell, given that most of the bombings are religiously motivated, and most religions don't tolerate gays, you could probably just clear most homosexuals right off the bat without worry.

Anyways, political correctness is stupid, blah blah blah.

ND