How do I avoid getting a virus? Part 1
Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 3:32PM | Alfred Huger I’ve worked in the Anti-Virus (AV) industry for the lion’s share of a decade and a question I rarely hear is ‘How do I avoid getting a virus?’ It’s common for me to get questions on pretty much every other facet of viruses (like, whose product is best/worst, who writes the viruses etc, are all the viruses really written by the Russian mob?) but rarely do people ask me how to avoid getting a virus in the first place. It’s almost as if we are all resigned to getting one eventually.
As it happens I think the question is worth asking, because the answer is refreshingly answerable (unlike whose product is best/worst, who writes the viruses etc.) However, this is still a good news/bad news sort of answer. The good news is I can tell you how to dramatically reduce the chances of you getting an infection. The bad news is that most people will ignore the advice and get infected anyhow, because not all of the advice is fun to follow. Nonetheless I am going to give this a shot in a multi-part blog published once a week through December (2009).
What I am laying out here will help you avoid some of the common causes of people getting infected with viruses. It will not mitigate the risk entirely but it may put you ahead of where you are today. Listed below are a few sound and proven ways to avoid getting common malware onto your system.
Lie down with dogs and you may wake up with fleas…
This is only mildly tongue-in-cheek. The Internet, like anywhere, has good and bad neighborhoods. Often the more seedy neighborhoods carry more risk in the real work and it’s no different online. Where you spend your time and what you do while your there counts. When considering what’s safe and what’s not (on the seedier side of the net), apply these simple rules:
1. Porn sites are often unsafe. Avoid them if you can.
I realize this is unwelcome news to many people and this piece of advice is likely to be ignored but porn sites harbor malicious software far more often than other sorts of mainstream web sites. Why? Primarily because they command large audiences who are somewhat eager to click on things, pretty much anything really. This eagerness makes people vulnerable and they end up both relieving themselves of credit cards (which are often stolen) and often have malware deposited on their systems by clicking malicious links. The site operators themselves might not be complicit with this but malware authors love to crack porn sites and use them to get access to people’s computers. Sad perhaps but true.
2. Stolen software is bad, very, very bad.
Pirated software is also a great place for malware authors to plant Trojans. Sometimes attackers modify clean (stolen) software so that it still works and you may never know you’ve been infected while in other cases the purported software package is obviously bogus but by the time you find out, it’s too late.
3. Stolen Video, Music etc. is also bad. Pay now or pay (dearly) later.
Aside from pirated software being quite risky so is pirated music and video. It’s not at all uncommon for pirated music and video to be rigged in such a way as to take advantage of weaknesses in your video/music players (and then subsequently plant malware on your system) or to simply be something other than what they state, usually not something you want on your computer.
This blog will continue the week of December 14, 2009.
NYWGNK62R3NS
Reader Comments (26)
Hi Al!
What is the proper way of communicating with you guys at Immunet?
Do you plan a forum or something like that?
I have a feature request that could benefit both Immunet and users.
Woodrow
Woodrow,
You can mail either alfred@immunet.com or support@immunet.com either will work.
Best,
al
Not so good thing is that most people will ignore the advice and get infected anyhow, because not all of the advice is fun to follow.
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