Once upon a time, a computer user, usually just had to avoid opening any unsolicited and suspicious looking email with an attachment or avoid downloading suspicious software from the internet. Today, there are plenty of ways, through which malware and spyware applications and mole their way in to your computer. So much so, that some spyware applications, can even download themselves through infected online advertisements on fairly legal and legitimate web sites.
One such legitimate, web site - TomsHarware.com, had a advertisement, that was infected with a malware, which redirected, many visitors to web site that downloaded other spyware and malware applications, when the advertisements were clicked. Many such computers, today, are infected by, what seems to be, advertisements, that are taken over by malicious code. Such advertisements when clicked on, either at that instant itself, download spyware and other malware applications on to your PCs, with out your obvious consent or these advertisements redirect you to other such web sites, which do the job for them.
A research firm, has also pointed out, that many sponsored links, that are shown by many search engines are, in fact carriers of such advertisements or are web sites, that harbor spyware or malware applications. Some, web search engines, like yahoo, are using advance measures to cope up with many of such listings, using tools like their Media Guard system, which blocks, malicious ads and links that contains such ads. Media guard, on the hand, successfully has scanned and detected more than fifty thousand ads, which contained over seventeen different types of spyware and malware.
