What places are you most likely to get a virus on the computer by visiting.?

Question

I just had to have my computer reformatted b/c of a virus and its happened twice already this month! I take alot of quizzes and like to do surveys and go alot of places but I was told to be careful where I go from now on. How do u know where is safe and where your very likely to get a virus or is there a way to tell?

Answer 1

Now, For the straight truth. You can get a virus of any kind any where on the net at any time. You can get hit right here on yahoo answers. That's why you get the best AV you can buy. Any page you go to can have bad code embedded in it. Just like not to long ago i went to a website looking up the benefits of real grape juice and the human heart. While the page was loading my AV caught a bad script trying to load from a advertisement that was on the page. It blocked it and stopped it.



Just always remember, If your running a free AV know what the AV is capable of doing and not doing. Take AVG. It can't do anything with root kits. So if it had have been a root kit trying to install it would have happened with AVG. One more, If i have had Avast on my machine that day and the virus that tried to install it's self behaved in a way that Avast could not have detected it, My computer would have been infected because Avast has no heuristic scanning in the free version.



What i am trying to tell you is you can get hit any time, any place , any where with anything. It pays in the long run to have the best AV your money can buy on your computer.



One other thing, There are computers out there. Mostly in China & Russia that do nothing but scourer the internet looking for computer with weak AV's and unpatched OS so they can scan there ports looking for vulnerabilities. CC # SS #. Anyway that they might can make money.



The internet is a dangerous place. More dangerous than a lot of people realize. Be smart. Get the best AV you can buy. Keep your computer patched. You will go years without getting hit.

Answer 2

2

Answer 3

adult sites, warez sites, torrent downloads, and unrated applications. Be sure to check all your USB drives with anti virus too. And quit using Internet exploder, its getting better but still gets taken advantage of on the web.

Answer 4

Its more important to make sure that your Windows and antivirus program are up-to-date. Also, make sure that your antivirus has current definitions (it should say the date). If you're getting infected that often, I would suspect something is not protecting you properly.



Torrenting, P2P file sharing, downloading random free games and programs, and opening email attachments from people you don't know are all great ways to get infected.

Answer 5

On top of action-radius suggests, it is also a very good idea to ensure *all* your programs are up-to-date - especially things like Flash and Java. Download Secunia PSI to help you here - it does a very good job of tracking down the latest updates for all your third-party programs and is quite user-friendly.

http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/



If you don't use it already, I suggest downloading and using Firefox as your web browser. There are some very good add-ons available for it.



Firefox: http://www.firefox.com/



NoScript add-on - probably the most important add-on you should consider. NS blocks all scripts and active content from running (a very common source of infection) and gives YOU control over which scripts YOU want to allow.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722



Adblock Plus add-on - blocks ads and pop-ups - another common source of infection.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865



Web of Trust add-on - helps warn you against malicious web sites.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3456



EDIT:



SpywareBlaster will also help block some dodgy sites and other crap.

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

Answer 6

Your best alternatives are

1. install a firewall



2. install a good anti-viral program (possibly the new (free) avast 5.03 for home users

available at

http://download.cnet.com/Avast-Free-Antivirus/

3000-2239_4-10019223.html?part=

rb-watchlist&tag=watchmail_sc_name



3. keep your anti-virus programs and definitions up to date



4. do not open mail from unknown senders simply because it

is addressed to you



5. routinely run free virus scans which you can choose brom bing or google or most any search engine



6. if you are not familiar with a web site check out its validity at whois.com before logging onto it.

Answer 7

Hi, well it sounds like we might have had the same problems. I know that from my experiences that you definitely don't want to open any e-mails that are sounding, "too good-to be true", so then once they've peaked your curiosity, they lure you in by having you maybe... click on to another link that is connected to their own sent e-mail sent to you or, another way is, for them to have an attachment attached to the e-mail, then once you've clicked on to that attachment, they've got you! "So I would say",just be careful when opening up mail that is sent to you by someone you don't recognize especially if it has "attachments" included. You don't have to be paranoid about it, just be aware. Well I hope it helps. Good Luck!

Answer 8

most places is your drives

when a virus come from pen drive , a autorun.inf file is copied into every partition and when you format your c drive , it still exists in other drives and when you double click on other drives the virus copies files to c drive again and your computer is infected .

You can removed this virus by this method



1) After format don`t open any drive directly

2) Go to Tool menu and ==> folder option ==> View Tab ===> Click on show hidden files and remove check mark from Hide Protected operating system files.



3)After this open every drive selecting it from Address bar in My computer

4) And after this delete hidden file autorun.inf from every drive

5) After deleting this file delete reboot your system



for more details

contact me - [e-mail]

Answer 9

Just browsing and taking quizzes is usually pretty safe.



You should mainly be real careful about files you run (execute) or install.



The worst places are porn sites and anything illegal like pirated movies or songs.

Answer 10

buy a mac so you can sleep well at night knowing your almost never going to get a virus

Answer 11

Using free proxies is one of the main sources for malware.