In order to protect yourself effectively, you need to know exactly how these computer viruses spread and attack innocent people.  Viruses can steal and delete your important data and some viruses are even capable enough to track your whereabouts and take your personal identity to sell on the black market.  Here are the top 5 ways computer viruses spread!

Number one on our list is Email, the main battleground for hackers.  With the use of advanced social engineering and information gathering, you could be a victim of a spear phishing attack.  You might think, “Well, I don’t open emails from strange addresses” …  This is a very naive way of thinking as hackers know this.  They first gather information on you and your interest before they attempt a serious attack.  They may watch for you to order something before spoofing an email from Fed-Ex.  They could infect your friend and send you an email from his account.  They may even go as far as impersonating government authorities.

The most serious viruses I’ve seen have spread this way–viruses capable of both deleting and stealing your important data.

Yes, you’re searching for cooking recipes or a business nearby that can fix your toilet.  All is well in your mind but did you think for a second that these sites you are going to can be outdated and poorly maintenance?  Believe me, a lot of people don’t know 1/5 of the vulnerabilities are can lurk on their sites.  Redirects, stored scripts, maybe the site is completely compromised already and the attack has full control to put whatever land mines he wants on the page.

This has become such a serious issue that we made this number 2 on our list.

So you like free stuff, great.  Who doesn’t?  Before you try downloading and installing that “hack” to avoid paying $50 for a game you’re dying to play.  You should really think twice, hackers prey on your excitement and curiosity.  A lot of these key-gens, cracks, torrents, and all of this free crap is most likely free for the sole purpose of infecting you.  And, don’t get me wrong, you may find a crack that does what you want it to do.  Ha, but it will probably do more that what you want it to.

Some software may give you what you want but in return fill your entire PC up with garbage and spyware.  This can sometimes ruin the overall speed of your PC and render your operating system worthless.

We all hate Windows Updates, hell we hate updating our systems in general.  But, you should know that a lot of these updates are patches to fix bugs on your system.  When software is created, even by Microsoft or Apple, there will always the possibility of bugs.  If you have an outdated system and you’re connecting to public WiFi that was setup just for the sack of getting you free WiFi…  There’s a good possibility that you are at risk and if there’s a skilled hacker in the area, and believe me there could be–a lot of these people don’t have much else to do with their lives.

Update your system and use a VPN before you think about joining a public WiFi network.

“Hey someone posted a link about how to improve your sex life, I think I’ll click it!”  Twitter, Facebook, YouTube…  Why do you let us down?  Oh, it’s not you, it’s the jerks on your platform.  This is out last but not least way that we see people getting infected in the year 2017.  Social media is not only the harbor of, “fake news” but it’s also the bridge to many of the infections that people are getting today.  Thank goodness FlashPlayer is just about out of the picture, that helps a little bit but this is still a very popular way that people deceive and trick you into getting infected.

There you go, the top five ways that I know of that people get infected online.  As you see I mentioned FlashPlayer in the last highlight, let’s just say that it’s very good that it’s not as prevalent as it used to be–FlashPlayer was a root cause to so many attacks and infections for years but with the popularity of HTML5 and newer browsers we are getting safer from the horrible tragedy of the early 2000s.

How do you like my list?  Was I politically incorrect?  Did I trigger you?  Would you like to call me an idiot anyway for no reason?  Please, do so in the comments below.  Til next time and that you for reading!