You are absolutely correct about the file sharing sites and being careful about where you surf on the Internet.
But to say that porn sites are high risk is not completely true. Even Twitter can be more dangerous than legitimate porn sites. I am only commenting on the porn sites because that seems to be the biggest misconception.
From a PCWorld article: The 17 Most Dangerous Places on the Web
pcworld.com
Not all Web dangers are created equal. Thankfully, our friends at the Department of Homeland Security have made our work of classifying Web threats a little easier. Will you get taken just by visiting that unfamiliar site? Or will you have to look for trouble? Let our threat level indicator be your guide.
Here are the places where you will likely find some of the various threats (You have to read the article to see which threats are likely to be found on these sites.
Most dangerous:
Torrent sites
Hacked legitimate sites
Your inbox, hacked legitimate sites
Very dangerous:
Twitter
Video download sites, peer-to-peer networks
Search engines
Hacked Websites, plus your inbox
Moderately Dangerous:
Websites that use Flash
Your e-mail inbox
'Legitimate' porn sites
Video download sites
Just about any ad-supported Website
Facebook
Social networks
Porn sites have a reputation of being less secure than mainstream sites, but that assumption doesn't tell the whole story. "There is no doubt that visiting Websites of ill-repute is deadly dangerous. If you make a habit of it, it's a given that you'll be attacked at some point," says Roger Thompson, chief research officer with security firm AVG. "Unfortunately, staying away from those sites won't keep you safe by itself, because innocent sites get hacked all the time, and are used as lures to draw victims to the attack servers."
And as mentioned earlier, many porn sites operate as actual, legitimate businesses that want to attract and retain customers. That said, it may be hard to tell the "legit" porn sites from malware-hosting sites that use porn as a lure.
If You Have to Go There: Be suspicious of video downloads, or sites that require you to install video codecs to view videos (see the next threat, below). Using tools like AVG's LinkScanner and McAfee's SiteAdvisor (or SiteAdvisor for Firefox) can help you weed out the malicious sites.
And, again, consider visiting such sites on a secondary machine. You don't want your browser history on the family PC.
B.K. |
