I think we all remember that back in the old days of Windows 98 and XP we lived with the inevitability that one day during our computer’s lifetime, it was going to get a virus. A nasty, gut wrenching virus that downloaded copious amounts of illegal pornography and then sent an image of your drive to the FBI to come arrest your depraved ass.
It was some scary shit, too. Like the story of a 21 year old man who got a virus that posed as a fake message from the FBI that he was under arrest for possessing child pornography, and to proceed to the nearest police station. He did so, and was arrested because he did in fact upon having his electronics searched have this illegal material.
This story is as recent as 2013, which boggles my mind because I had assumed that almost all malware these days was a thing of the past and phishing was the hip new thing to do to fuck with people online. Apparently, though, people still get viruses.
Who gets viruses? Where do you get them? How do you prevent them?
To quote Master Shake, “I always double-wrap my rascal.” Viruses can always be avoided with careful preventative measures. The people who do get viruses I’m willing to assume install McAfee and call it a day.
It ain’t that simple, bro. Never is. Your first line of defense isn’t your anti-virus software, it’s your common sense.
I don’t feel like I need to preach on about how stupid it is to download files if you don’t trust the source, or to visit web sites that plaster “FREE FREE FREE” all over just to make sure that four letter word is visible in your search results. No, your enemy when it comes to a good bit of your modern day viruses is Javascript and Flash.
I’ve mentioned before on the forum that I hate web sites that overuse Javascript. I typically would say that liberal use of Javascript to power your website is the clear marking of a fresh-out-of-college web designer who has no idea about creating a functional or intuitive web site but want to put to use everything they learned at once. They probably have never been on a 1.5mbps connection out in the country to realize how long it takes to run their overburdened sites.
Let me tell you a personal story about the first, and worst, virus I ever received. I was a regular visitor of a website called Mangafox. I didn’t really know a lot about computers, then, and it promised me the ability to read thousands of different manga all online for absolutely free. So I used it for a few weeks and was eventually hit with a ransomware fake security suite claiming it had found thousands of viruses on my computer and it would remove them for an amount of money.
A system restore later, I did some poking around and googling, and it turned out Mangafox apparently had some shit advertisers which is where I had got the virus from as this affected other people who used the site too. First off, I was an idiot then for thinking I was going to get something for nothing. Secondly, I was even more of an idiot for not ad-blocking the fuck out of everywhere I go. Shady advertisers and lazy admins who don’t screen their ad suppliers are what made me definitively decide that I’m not giving ad-revenue to anybody anywhere and if I do it has to be with a place where I trust the ad's source and the host.
My story is probably what encapsulates a lot of people. We’re not bad people, we’re just ignorant in some ways like how to prevent our viruses even though we have anti-virus software running. What happened to me was a zero-day thing, something that was out In the wild and so new that McAfee had no definitions for it. I had some definitions for it, I assure you, and they were quite colorful.
Flash forward from 2010 to 2015 and how do I “double wrap?” Let’s start with the easy stuff. First off, don’t install McAfee anything. It’s dog shit. Get Avast or AVG—whatever, just something. If you’re using Windows 8, even cooler. You already have Windows Defender installed, and it’s a damn fine piece of software. Don’t listen to the naysayers that it doesn’t catch zero-day exploits, because where that really matters in prevention is your browsing habits. I would definitely recommend looking into ad blockers if you don't already have one, and on top of that a Javascript whitelist/blacklist add-on like NoScript for Firefox or ScriptSafe for Chrome. Those are, I think, the best ways to protect yourself online from viruses and malware out in the wild your anti-virus wouldn't recognize.
It was some scary shit, too. Like the story of a 21 year old man who got a virus that posed as a fake message from the FBI that he was under arrest for possessing child pornography, and to proceed to the nearest police station. He did so, and was arrested because he did in fact upon having his electronics searched have this illegal material.
This story is as recent as 2013, which boggles my mind because I had assumed that almost all malware these days was a thing of the past and phishing was the hip new thing to do to fuck with people online. Apparently, though, people still get viruses.
Who gets viruses? Where do you get them? How do you prevent them?
To quote Master Shake, “I always double-wrap my rascal.” Viruses can always be avoided with careful preventative measures. The people who do get viruses I’m willing to assume install McAfee and call it a day.
It ain’t that simple, bro. Never is. Your first line of defense isn’t your anti-virus software, it’s your common sense.
I don’t feel like I need to preach on about how stupid it is to download files if you don’t trust the source, or to visit web sites that plaster “FREE FREE FREE” all over just to make sure that four letter word is visible in your search results. No, your enemy when it comes to a good bit of your modern day viruses is Javascript and Flash.
I’ve mentioned before on the forum that I hate web sites that overuse Javascript. I typically would say that liberal use of Javascript to power your website is the clear marking of a fresh-out-of-college web designer who has no idea about creating a functional or intuitive web site but want to put to use everything they learned at once. They probably have never been on a 1.5mbps connection out in the country to realize how long it takes to run their overburdened sites.
Let me tell you a personal story about the first, and worst, virus I ever received. I was a regular visitor of a website called Mangafox. I didn’t really know a lot about computers, then, and it promised me the ability to read thousands of different manga all online for absolutely free. So I used it for a few weeks and was eventually hit with a ransomware fake security suite claiming it had found thousands of viruses on my computer and it would remove them for an amount of money.
A system restore later, I did some poking around and googling, and it turned out Mangafox apparently had some shit advertisers which is where I had got the virus from as this affected other people who used the site too. First off, I was an idiot then for thinking I was going to get something for nothing. Secondly, I was even more of an idiot for not ad-blocking the fuck out of everywhere I go. Shady advertisers and lazy admins who don’t screen their ad suppliers are what made me definitively decide that I’m not giving ad-revenue to anybody anywhere and if I do it has to be with a place where I trust the ad's source and the host.
My story is probably what encapsulates a lot of people. We’re not bad people, we’re just ignorant in some ways like how to prevent our viruses even though we have anti-virus software running. What happened to me was a zero-day thing, something that was out In the wild and so new that McAfee had no definitions for it. I had some definitions for it, I assure you, and they were quite colorful.
Flash forward from 2010 to 2015 and how do I “double wrap?” Let’s start with the easy stuff. First off, don’t install McAfee anything. It’s dog shit. Get Avast or AVG—whatever, just something. If you’re using Windows 8, even cooler. You already have Windows Defender installed, and it’s a damn fine piece of software. Don’t listen to the naysayers that it doesn’t catch zero-day exploits, because where that really matters in prevention is your browsing habits. I would definitely recommend looking into ad blockers if you don't already have one, and on top of that a Javascript whitelist/blacklist add-on like NoScript for Firefox or ScriptSafe for Chrome. Those are, I think, the best ways to protect yourself online from viruses and malware out in the wild your anti-virus wouldn't recognize.