Pick up Something Undesirable

From a good friend:

“They kept it all day, and charged an hour of labour.  There was a problem that the virus scanner pulled up for me that I couldn't fix, and 2 other items, viruses or trojan horses or something.  It seems to me that you can pick up something undesirable every once in a while from no particular source, but from just trolling the internet.  My husband has been using youtube lately and he likes ebay, and we both go to other sites here and there, but we don't do a lot of downloading, no music downloading.  Who knows?

From me:

I knows!

You can't pick up something undesirable just from trolling the internet.

Here's an extreme case:

You can't pick up something undesirable from any of my domains (except ME!). I don't have nasty stuff on my domains. I have text and I have files that you can d/l, but no trojans, virii, etc.

Here's a slightly less extreme case:

You can't pick up something undesirable from any of my domains OR from The Toronto Star (let's say).

Here's a slightly less extreme case:

You can't pick up something undesirable from any of my domains OR from The Toronto Star OR from Rick Spence's blog .

And so on. The vast majority (99.99%) of web sites are innocuous.

http://www.seltech.ca/ comes to mind.

As does http://www.esbe.com/ .

You CAN pick up malicious stuff from sites that offer to do, give or otherwise provide something that requires more than your eyes.

Example: "Email this free greeting card to your friends" is an obvious email-harvesting scam.

Example: "Run this free test on your computer now" is another means of letting someone look at your computer system,

Example: "Download this free program/track/movie now".

Any site that offers you a chargeable service or download and uses your credit card is suspect UNLESS you'd be prepared to stand up in church and announce what you've done.

Any site that offers a free download and does NOT have a verifiable address is suspect.

I maintain, therefore, that downloads from my site are OK because

(1) Although they are Microsoft office macros, they are for geeky people who know what they are doing.

(2) I provide full contact details on my site (name, address, phone, email)

(3) The information in (2) can be verified by a domain WHOIs from any domain registrar ( NetFirms.ca )

Bottom Line: It's little different from shopping for fruit, or buying a car.

Common sense; keep your wits about you; set off with a shopping list and stick to it; buy from established dealers.

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