Last week, we told you about effortsby Microsoft Corporation to stop Zeus,one of the most harmfulcybercrime operations active today.Zeus hackers use a network of infected computers,known as botnets,to steal personal information from computer users.On March twenty-third,officials seized computer servers in two states,Pennsylvania and Illinois.The servers were said to be operatingsome of the worst known Zeus botnets.Richard Boscovich is with the Digital Crimes Unitat Microsoft.He says the operators of the serversdid not know they were linked to cybercrime.RICHARD BOSCOVICH: "The hosting providers inand of themselves are not necessarilyin cahoots with the criminals, so to speak.In the room that we walked into therewere over ten thousand computers.So their business is simply to host customers."Zeus botnets are positioned all over the world.Mr. Boscovich says they act as commandand control centers for the infected computers.RICHARD BOSCOVICH: "It's not just one botnetbut probably hundreds of different botnetsthat come from this particular code base."And, he says, the Zeus botnets are not easy to identify.RICHARD BOSCOVICH: "These command and control centers are constantly moving.So it takes a lot of effort to be ableto identify where they were, or where they areand where they are going to be."Microsoft says it is studying informationgathered from the servers that were seized last month.It hopes to gather more evidenceagainst the unidentified Zeus operators.It also hopes to identify and notify the more thanthirteen million computer usersthat have been infected with the Zeus malware.Mr. Boscovich says there are many thingsthat users can and should do to protect themselvesfrom harmful software programs.At the very least, he says,they should be using legitimate softwarethat has been purchased from creditable providers.And he says every computermust have current anti-virus software.Most of all, Mr. Boscovich says,computer users must be careful about e-mails.RICHARD BOSCOVICH: "The bad guys are extremely adeptat sending emails that appear to be from friends,from family members or from banks or companies, in fact."Microsoft is not alone in efforts to fight cybercrime.Security experts from CrowdStrike, Dell SecureWorksand other companies took down a large botnetknown as Kelihos last month.As quickly as Kelihos was stopped, researchers saycybercriminals began working to build another botnet.Also last month, the European Union announced stepsto fight the growing problem of cybercrime.They include plans to establish a new cybercrimes center,to be based in The Hague.The center will deal with issueslike misuse of credit card information,identity theft and the sexual abuse of children online.And, that's the VOA Special English Technology Report,written by June Simms.