Forget What You Know About Avoiding Viruses
By Bob Rankin
All the advice you’ve ever heard about how to avoid getting infected by a computer virus may be wrong. Well, at least some of it… A new study shed lights on how viruses and other malware are most commonly spread in today’s Internet environment. Read on for details…
Where Are Viruses Lurking on the Web?
The 2013 Cisco Annual Security Report includes some disturbing data about how malware (viruses, spyware and other nasties) infects millions of computers each year.
The surprising conclusion of the Cisco study is this: All of the advice you’ve received about sticking with known, trusted Web sites seems to be wrong. In fact, the more legitimate a site is, the more likely you are to catch a malware infection from it.
The report found that the vast majority of malware comes from mainstream sites visited by mass audiences, not from shady sites that relatively few people visit. E-commerce sites are 21 times more likely to deliver malware than counterfeit software sites, for example. Viewing an online advertisement, you are 182 times more likely to be served malware than you are when viewing porn.
Excerpt shared with permission from Bob Rankin.
