I’m sorry I need to bother people with this kind of a basic question, but I do have some work to do etc. I’ve had Avast Free earlier, now I’ve had Avast Internet Security for a year now, I’ve been happy with it so I got myself a 3 (?) years license.
Anyhow, it’s a question of a friend of mine, with a 1 month old computer that’s started to stall like an old horse. It’s possible it is hardware or software issues, but it’s also possible that he’s visited questionable sites.
Now, my question is, how easily can you be infected by visiting an infected site? Can it happen by just looking in, or does it need opening popups, or even digging deeper = going further in links? He’s with Windows 7, and the only fact I know is that he has closed down Windows Defender. What he now has as security, I do not know.
I know I have visited such dubious sites, or tried to, and Avast put a block because “the URL was… something”, so I stopped right there. I considered you know better.
Probably somebody like Essexboy will chime in, but it is very easy to get infected and you aren’t safe just by staying away from dodgy sites depending on what study you look up.
Beside porn, other sites such as warez, or illegal movie downloads sites usually are rife with malware ads from bad ad companies, b/c safer mainstream ad companies like Adsense refuse to do business with them.
it’s quite easy to be infected online and you don’t have to visit warez or porn sites for that.
My previous PC was infected by a google docs site. I wanted to read something and thought google is safe, well wrong thought.
As soon as I launched google docs, a window popped up for a milli second. It was a windos system32 window. First I did not understand what happened. MY PC slowed down and so I rebooted. After rebooting, the windows system32 window popped up again. After scanning my PC with malware / anti virus programs, I found out that the mbr code was changed. I had a PhysicalDrive0 Trojan. It happens and even websites which seem to be harmless or safe can be dangerous.
I have to agree with Asyn as the question/answer involves unlimited variables.
Personally I have not been infected for many years, even though I’m online almost everyday for a few hours researching and reading from numerous sites.
On the other hand, other folks like mentioned in the previous post simple read something from Google and get infected. I suppose one could look at it like " luck of the draw" but I look at it as informed, intelligent, non impulsive browsing combined with excellent security software and continuous, immediate updates of everything on my PC.
It’s a war and you have to be diligent and aware.
I remember way back in around 2005 that all I did was bring up one of those Lyrics websites, I think it was LyricsFreak … and without me doing anything else, I immediately saw a black window pop up with like a DOS environment. I saw some rapid-moving / scrolling text and was able to immediately decipher enough to determine that a Virus was being downloaded.
I immediately closed the window or pressed the Reset Button on my computer.
But, it was too late. Just in those few short seconds of seemingly having ONLY VISITED that Lyrics website, my computer got infected. McAfee, which is what I had at the time, confirmed it.
So YES, in THAT instant, my computer did get infected simply by me visiting a website.
Because I had not even clicked on anything yet.
And it wasn’t even a Porn site. So, avoiding Porn sites is not going to guarantee that your computer doesn’t get infected.
I think I read that Lyrics websites are somewhat targets for being infected.
If anyone remembers the sasser/blaster viruses of about 10 years back (or, was it more???!)
All you had to do was connect a windows-based computer to the internet to have it infected.
There was a whole slew of services you could disable beforehand to try to prevent infection. It was a real pain, trying to get windows XP upgraded to SP2 minus the infection. Win2K was also hit bad by them at the time.
So, no, you don’t even need to insert a CD/visit a website to get infected.
