The Security Mentor

Someone named Ben Edelman installed a fresh copy of Windows XP on a computer, and just to see what would happen he went to a web site before installing any of the available security fixes.

After he used Internet Explorer to look at a single web site he counted sixteen pieces of spyware which had gotten installed on his computer without his permission as a result of visiting that one web site.

He made a movie of the experience. The movie is a big download but watching it is educational. The first thing to notice is how his system goes out of control with random popups and error messages. Remember what that looks like. If it ever happens to you, react as though a large person walked up to you on the street and said "You're in the wrong neighborhood". Leave. Then run your anti-spyware software.

After the first few minutes the movie is all about the new junkware that got installed, and home users can skip that part of the movie without missing anything vital.

What's scary is that the spyware problem is even worse than what he shows. He said "No" to everything that asked permission. If you get tricked into allowing things to install themselves you can wind up even worse off than he was.

You have to prevent things like this from happening. Letting them happen and trying to fix them just doesn't make sense. If he'd run Windows Update first to get his security fixes from Microsoft, and if he'd used Firefox to look at the web site, then the movie would have been much duller.