People should take extra precautions with their computers during the Beijing Olympics because of the significant increase in spam e-mail and malware coinciding with the event.
'There has been an increase in the level of malicious activity during past Olympics,' said Chris Simmons, senior product marketing manager at security software firm Fortinet. 'Hackers will take the opportunity to spread malicious code or malware and infect legitimate websites.'
Fortinet's global security research team was monitoring a large number of sites for malicious activity, Mr Simmons added.
'If someone sends you an e-mail with a link to a site such as Olympic.com, make sure the website is trustworthy before you click on it,' said Mr Simmons. 'Hackers may change the spelling of Olympic into 'Olymip1c' in the e-mail to avoid being found by network monitors.'
Mr Simmons said hackers might also send instant messaging spam to users of MSN messenger.
National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre director Zhang Jian last month said China's IT systems experienced twice the normal amount of malicious attacks during 10th National Games in 2005.
