I've been reading some articles that claim that even without having install software, you can still get your computer infected with spyware through your browser. I normally disable my anti-virus anytime I browsing the net because it tends to slow down my machine but if this is true, I'd have to enable it all the time. Question I'd like answered, is it possible to get infected through your browser? Would disabling javascript help to prevent that from happening?
What on earth are you doing disabling your anti-virus at any time?! And what AV are you running that it slows down your entire computer?
I occasionally use avast to scan files I download. Otherwise when I'm not using it for that, I always have it disabled. I don't have a fast machine [with high specs] and won't upgrade any time soon because I don't use my computer for much except light-weight browsing so whenever I run my browser and the antivirus program it either slows down the computer significantly or at times it [the computer] simply stops responding.
It is possible for your computer to become infected via browser. This happened to me many times in the past. Do not disable JavaScript as it won't resolve the problem. I am very careful of certain sites I visit online. One news site I love visiting had a mysterious virus that somehow infected my system. I couldn't understand it but the site was more like a blog site rather than an authority site like CNN or MSNBC. I feel it comes down to your viewing activities online than any problems with your anti-virus. I had some of the best anti-virus systems on my computer and I still fell victim to my laptop being infected via browser.
Yes that is possible. When I was doing auto-surf where you would leave a tab open and you do your own thing while you earn credits for "viewing" other people's websites, Mcaffee was warning me all the time about some malicious webpages and asked if I would like to continue to view them. So even with webpages, you can still have your pc infected.
Hi, it's very possible to get infected by a virus via your web browser once you don't have a very strong ant-virus program running in the background. In fact, with the popularity of auto-surf programs today, and many people looking to gain some site traffic and alexa-ranking boost, it's very easy to download a piece of software unintentionally, just by clicking on a link that is supposed to take you to a web site. Honestly, turning off Javascript in your browser will not help you much, because it's possible for me (by the way, I'm a web developer) to cause a piece of software to download on a client machine even without javascript, once a target link has been clicked. Since most computer viruses are written to be autonomous, they can begin execution in the background, without any human intervention. Bottom line: I think your best bet is to leave your anti-virus running while you surf the web: That's probably even the most important time for it to be turned on. Considering your point about your anti-virus slowing down your system, I think you have a vital point there, especially for a heavy web surfer, but even that can be dealt with by doing a slight system upgrade; of course, that's assuming you have the financial power to go this route.
