The Security Mentor

"Stay out of bad neighborhoods" is good security advice anywhere, but it's easier to follow that advice in the physical world. In real life you can stay miles away from bad neighborhoods but online they're always a click or two away. In real life you can tell pretty quickly if a neighborhood is dangerous. Online, there may not be broken windows and knots of idle disreputable-looking people.

The conventional wisdom is to steer clear of porn and gambling sites. Not bad advice, but those aren't the worst places.

Researchers who want to collect samples of spyware to study, and maybe samples of worse things, like to start in places that distribute pirated copies of commercial software (or activation codes for them, same thing really). Places like that aren't even semi-legitimate businesses. Porn and gambling sites have addresses and bank accounts and can be sued, in theory, if they stay around long enough. That's not true of software pirates.

Any place that wants to set a hook in you has to start with bait. Some of the malicious emails offer you compromising pictures of celebrities: treat them like you would treat a guy beckoning you into an alley. Not all bait is as obviously bad, though. Studies came up with a surprise about who's dangerous: one of the top sources of spyware is sites offering free games.