Importance of applying security to your system

This is an update on my first post about the removing the trojan called smithfraud.  I help my friend get rid of the trojan and had the system purring, but shortly after he got back on the Internet with no protection and got hacked again.  This time worse then before.  Not only did he get smithfraud AGAIN but he got some crap I never even heard of.  I may have to wipe his entire hard drive.

I constantly tell him how important it is to secure your system even if your on dial-up.  Just having Sp2 for XP is not enough.  I recommend at least a firewall. 

If you have a broadband connection check out my walk through on securing broadband Internet connections.