Seems to me, that the best way to stay out of trouble is to be very careful about checking out new websites.
Used to be pretty common getting viruses from emails, especially those stupid chain emails, but most email hosting these days seems to stop the problems??? Thankfully so, because it is much harder to get folks to stop sending you stupid email stuff...
Yep, it’s called browser poisoning and you don’t have to download anything. It’s a “driveby” download (not unlike the mainstream media and their brainwashing)
I like to use combofix in conjunction with malwarebytes.
Sometimes you have to rename the .exe to .com to trick it into running in safe mode with networking.
It happens.
Last year I was looking for a picture to post and I think I accidentally installed some scare-ware.
No problemo. I already had Malwarebytes.
I ran it and it clobbered most of the scumbags program. Ran Spybot and got the rest.
If you already have the tools you can zap these punks pretty quick.
I think the people who create these programs should be summarily shot or hung in the town square.