Most people use antivirus to avoid these things, but if you know what you’re doing, you can keep your PC clean without them.
E-mail spam
A big spot for getting infected is through your email. There’s many strange tactics employed, sometimes it’s a package you never ordered, the IRS saying they didn’t get taxes, or something like that. Anyway, they always make it sound urgent and you need to just download this pdf here. Which of course, is an exploit and will install a “virus” on your computer. Monitor your email closely – the IRS doesn’t use email, don’t open PDF files or any files of any sort unless it’s just a jpg from your buddy or something – even then you need to be careful. Many of these messages/files are undetected by antivirus – the people sending these out change up the code/signatures continuously.
Links in email – be very careful and monitor the ACTUAL URL that shows up when you put your mouse over it. Sometimes it’s disguised pretty well if you’re not paying attention – like www.irs.gov.pollywocks.com/exploit. The main thing to remember is that if your buddy has been infected with the email, they might send stuff to you, so don’t trust it just because it’s from your friend. Also don’t trust the sent from address – email is terribly easy to spoof. (make up names)
Most guys sending out these emails don’t care at all if they get in trouble so they will use trademarks from companies and make it look as legitimate as possible. You need to closely examine an unusual email before proceeding to do anything. These are the reasons why a ton of people get infected through email messages.
E-mail Phishing
The guys that do e-mail phishing are employing the same tactics I went over above – but this time they usually use a fake login page instead of trying to infect you – they might mimic a bank login page and steal your details. Again, paying close attention to the URL is a must. E-mail in general is an insecure method of communication so do not send personal details at all through it if it’s requested by an unknown party in a message. Everyone in your email inbox is an unknown party. The only time it’s “ok” is if you are sending it yourself to an address you know.
Online Adobe Exploits
The easiest way to avoid these is to run Firefox with Noscript enabled at all times. If you want to view an object from certain sites you can setup an allow list, and there are pre-made allow lists online for trusted websites. Noscript has saved me many times from being infected. These are just tough to avoid if you’re not being vigilant enough on the web.
Instant Messaging Phishing
Usually they say you’re going to get something for free if you give out your login details. Maybe money, maybe something else, depends on what they’re trying to get out of you. Never send your information to an unknown party.
Adware
Usually adware is for games that are advertised online. They require an install to play. Fortunately they usually play by the rules so if you read the terms of service you will see that the application installs ad supported content. If you want to avoid it simply don’t install it and cancel the installer. Some adware companies are more malicious than others, but the big companies are easy to uninstall if you want and show you the terms up front. These guys really aren’t all that bad to be honest for the most part.
There’s new schemes that come out every day – so just be vigilant while you’re on the web. There’s lots of things that antivirus simply won’t protect you from. Some things it will, it’s good to have but won’t stop everything. Unfortunately if you run windows eventually you will most likely be infected with something at some point. The “best” method is to run linux or mac osx along with antivirus and noscript. This gives you the best chance to not be infected with something – but even then there’s still a chance.
