How do you know if you’re in the bad part of town known as the internet? You know, the place that kind of scares you, takes you somewhere you didn’t expect?

Well for starters, if you’re not seeing the content you are expecting, that’s a start. If you see plenty of obtrusive, and obscene ads, that’s another big hint. It you see a lot flashing, nudity, weird questions, and annoying popups, you’re probably not where you want to be.

How did you get there?

• You clicked something. Probably an ad. It was probably very exciting or at least intriguing. Something made you click it, after all…it was probably an image or a link that appealed to you.
• You accidentally typed in the wrong URL. If you manually tried to go to someplace and mistyped or misspelled the URL, you probably ended up on a landing page or someplace that didn’t quite look right. Oops.
• You are looking for something illegal or hard to find. If you are looking for cracks, warez or serial numbers for illegally downloaded software, many sites advertise to have this information. You click their links and they either send you to other sites, download malware to you, or send you on an endless loop looking for it.
• You clicked a link in an email from an unknown person. Ouch. You get an email from someone you don’t know. So you open it, and bam! You’re on some strange site that may look borderline legit, but you notice the url is spelled funny or doesn’t make sense.
• Instant Message Link or download. Do not click or accept attachments from anyone you do not know.
• Your home page on your browser has changed. You already have a virus, spyware, or malware. Time to start searching for it.

Okay, so you’re there. Now what?

• Don’t touch anything. If you haven’t downloaded a virus or piece of spyware yet, clicking anything on the page isn’t going to help. Use the back button on your browser to go back. Or type a new address in the address bar, like www.knowgenie.com
• Don’t click okay on any popups. It doesn’t matter how legit they look. They probably are not. The most convincing ones are the ones that look like legit computer anti virus programs, windows alerts, or error messages. Clicking them usually results in downloading something a little less than helpful.
• Don’t answer yes to any prompts. Just as above, answering yes often results in downloading something less than good for your system’s health.
• Close your browser. The best bet is to close your browser altogether and start over. Delete your cookies and temporary internet files (cache).
• Don’t click the close icon (little x) on anhy window other than the main browser window. There is usually a click event attached to it that triggers a download action for a virus or malware. If you’re unsure and want to close the window, you can do so by pressing Alt-F4 at the same time (this will close the current program running…in this case, your browser.)