Be safe: Beware of "drive by downloads!"

A few months ago there was a study that claimed that several adult sites, including this one, were sources for nasty viruses (the computer kind, not the people kind) and other malware. While it's not true that XH directly hosts any of this, it is possible that a crooked advertiser could buy a banner ad or something similar here or indirectly through an ad reseller and use it to spread malware. I found this out the hard way.

Last weekend I detected several problems after browsing here--muddled audio, slow performance--and found that some ad on this site had installed a rootkit (very bad) virus on my machine. Unfortunately there is no way I can tell what ad did this. Fortunately no permanent damage was done, but it took me a while to do the cleanup and make double sure that nothing had been compromised.

So,lesson learned: PLEASE PRACTICE SAFE BROWSING HERE AND ELSEWHERE!

Besides keeping your antivirus software up to date, there are free tools available to check and fix things that can sometimes get past even the best antivirus software. Search for "tdsskiller" (detects rootkits) and "malwarebytes" for a couple of good, fast, and free tools. Disclaimer: I have no interest in any of these products. I just want to help keep our community safer.