Having retired from NASA as an IT Security Specialist (Affectionately called that #(*&$ Computer Security Guy) I have seen, troubleshot, researched and removed a few problems with computers. My forte was forensic analysis, but everything else used to be thrown our way. The viruses guru sat right behind me and we worked close together. Anyhow, that for background.
The malware personal security is easily removable if you follow several of the instructions that were given. And the advice to be careful of what click on is very sound. Even with my background I sometimes click a little to fast. However, Norton's Internet Security has protected me time and time again.
In the old days, the transmitting of viruses (that includes the present day malware and adware) was by swapping floppy disks, then CD's, then flash disks/SD Cards. It graduated to email, then web sites, with all the previous methods still being used. Never trust anything that you have not personally requested from a reliable source, and then only half trust it. Scan it with an anti-virus program. Most anti-virus programs will automatically scan and protect you with the heuristics built into the anti-virus program, but you must have it turned on.
There are so many variants of viruses that it boggles the mind. There are some that are written to be destructive, but the majority are written to be non-destructive, and only gain notoriety. The worst virus is the "script-kiddie" virus. That is a virus that has been modified by a non-knowledgeable person (a.k.a. script kiddie) Those can be very destructive because the person doesn't know what they are doing when they modify it.
Malware and adware are a different category than a "virus." They are developed to annoy you, or to "phish" for information. There is no one program that will remove all malware or adware. It just hasn't happened yet. They are close, but no cigar. An example is Spybot, a spyware removal tool, and Adaware for removing adware. They need to be run separately to remove the majority of spyware and adware. Notice I said majority. If you suspect that your computer is infected by these types of programs, it will behoove you to run different removal programs for both malware and adware.
A big help is to clear your cache and cookies off of your computer on a periodic bases. It will depend on just how much surfing you do. If you look at you cookie files you will see many, many cookies that begin with "ad. or ad(something). These are those annoying advertisements that pop up when we visit a web page. You may want to investigate adding a
HOSTS file on your computer. You can also go into your options and make exceptions and allowances for specific web sites. You could, for example, block all of iRV2 by adding a block of "*.irv2.com" without the quotes and block it in the cookies option. You can also allow specific items.
In a perfect world we would not have to worry about all this "crap." But this is not a perfect world and we are each responsible for our own security, which means we are watchful for those we communicate with.
Oops! I rambled to much. Sorry.
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