Be careful where you surf

I've blogged a bit about the importance of knowing what web sites you are REALLY visiting, knowing where a link will take you BEFORE you click on it, avoiding sketchy sites, and being able to trust the sites you visit.

Isn't surfing harmless, as long as you don't download and install anything sketchy?
It used to be that you could avoid getting viruses and other bad stuff by avoiding opening email attachments and not installing random software. However, the number of web-based malware attacks have increased significantly in the past year. Drive-by downloads could happen without you knowing.

What's that mean? Basically, by merely opening a web page on your computer, you could get bad software installed on your computer.

What could that do? Having bad software on your computer is sort of like having an invisible intruder in your house (except that it's on your computer.) The intruder could find and steal confidential information about you and send it out (which could lead to identity theft).. It could log everything you type. It could put other bad software on your machine.. It could use your computer to do some not-so-good things.

Good web sites that you trust are also always being under attack by hackers. If the good web site has some insecure weak point, a hacker could take advantage of that and use your good web site to trick you and do something bad as well. So, if anything looks suspicious, I'd always be wary.

Some search engines and web browsers will warn you about sites that are known to be bad web sites. So, for example, if you're searching on Google, and Google marks a site as potentially harmful to your computer, don't go there!