Originally Posted by trueimage
The word 'free' is an automatic virus and spyware invitation. Never do a search for anything free!
Not to be sound hateful, but this isn't true. Some sites will be flagged by your virus program for POTENTIAL problems. It may just be that they leave cookies. (for definition of a cookie, see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie) which sometimes can just be a saved web page.
As long as you have antivirus AND spyware protection, you will be fine. Its VERY, VERY, VERY important to use both of these programs, and there are a LOT more spyware problems lately than actual viruses.
Just because you are doing searches for "free" things has nothing to do with whether you will catch a virus or not. Some sites are known as being worse than others , such as facebook, myspace, etc. But, that still doesn't mean that you will catch one just because you use it.
Our antivirus programs err on the side of caution. I use "free" downloads from "free' sites every single day. And have for years. In the last 5 years, my antivirus (AVG, by the way,one of the best there is) has "caught" 4 viruses before they came in. Thats it, in 5 years. And all of those were from Facebook, myspace, or an IM program my boys were running.
Now, one last thing. Almost ALL porn sites have viruses, LOL! Not that you were using them, LOL, just thought I'd throw that in there, LOL!