When you go to a website like your bank or a store, you WANT to see whatever they have to show you, right?

Well that means you gave that sight ADMIN level privlidges to put files on your computer in order to display their web pages properly. Just by going there.

(Remember ALL webpages, every graffic, sound and bit of code MUST load onto your computer before you can see it. Its not like looking through a window and they stay on their side)

OK, so now your over stimulated teen wants the latest game without paying for it, or maybe they just want the newest movies and music.

These 'Grey Area' (ok , lets admit it, ILLEGAL) sites dont control what they share with others. So the file your kid runs, or sometimes the websites themselves, can attempt to to add spyware, trojans, viruses and keyloggers. A few just enjoy doing some harm.

Your antivirus program can't stop something with ADMIN privliges from getting installed on your system... Thats the bottom line.

Your antivirus CAN slap on the cuffs the millisecond that trojan begins to run.

-IF the antivirus people know about the new danger yet
-AND IF they have written a working patch for your computer yet
-AND IF you have gotten that patch, which your system checks for once each week.

GOING TO IFFY SITES CAN COST YOU YOUR WELL RUNNING COMPUTER

I dont mean to sound so dramatic. But there are holes and there will always be holes in your defenses.

I am not suggesting any activity violating copyright law, but here are some more facts.

-Videos and Music files are very safe.
-If you download video or music and you get something that wants to be installed. Delete it without touching it.

Movies have extensions like AVI, MPEG2, MOV, DiVX
Music has extensions like MP3, Wav, Ogg

Programs that can have trojans or viruses have
extensions like .EXE, .COM

(Which is why I never try to get software for free anymore.
I rarely got a clean running copy of what I wanted. And companies have gotten EXCELLENT about detecting iffy licenses.)