The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has announced it prevented more than 36,000 illegal software products from being sold on a select number of online auction sites in the first six months of 2007. The BSA's figures also revealed that the value of the software being offered illegally via during the period totalled over $8m.

“And this is the tip of the iceberg”, said John Wolfe, the excitingly titled director of internet enforcement at the BSA, who warns that counterfeit copies can pose a significant data protection risk.

The BSA release quotes a study from researcher IDC that states the chances of buying legal software that hasn’t had viruses, trojans or spyware embedded into the code on an auction site is less than 1 in 2 (which was a mistake in the press release, by the way - it is actually meant to say 'illegal'). Now that would have been a story: 'Fifty per cent of commercial software is embedded with viruses, Trojans or spyware'...