World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo fans should be proactive and protect their computer from malicious software that appears sometimes in advertising banners. I have no clue how a marketing ad campaign company can sometimes accidentally or on purpose leak some of these, but it does happen.
Right about a few minutes ago, on my own website I got a malicious software alert. Obviously, I wouldn’t rationally cause issues to my visitors, less to myself. And I work with the IncGamers folks and they are as concerned as me. Rush will contact the ad network to see what’s going on.
For now, what matters is to teach you how to protect yourself any time you visit a website, even trusted ones.
Download FREE antivirus software – avast! Home Edition here.
Whenever you visit a website with an ad banner that contains a Malicious software, you will get an alert similar to the one I just got a few minutes ago.
Avast will not allow the malicious code to be downloaded into your computer, stopping it dry. It has daily updates auto-installing patches on the go. Other software you can install is Spybot Search & Destroy protects you from spyware and deletes cookies, offers immunization scan too.
A favorite Firefox addon is NoScript which stops javascript from be run in any page you visit. You can allow certain javascript to work by selecting it from a menu. Sometimes if you are filling a registration form or buying stuff online you would want to disable a specific javascript. I use it all the time.
Another software you should consider installing is Ad-Aware by Lavasoft. All of these are free to download with no trials.
I really recommend that scanner program, with it, I found several occurrences of Win32:Trojan-gen {Other}, apparently the reason Blizz closed my account on Tuesday night for 24h, after which it was open again, until I logged in early on Saturday morning, d/c, then closed again, and still is 30 hours later…