You don’t need to be a geek to avoid malware. Just run a good AV (and most of the best are free) and don’t click yes on stuff you don’t know where it comes from. Anybody can do it, but people tend to be very agreeable with their computers, they think it actually knows stuff, so when it “asks” to do something they say yes.
That was the thing. I WAS running antivirus on BOTH computers (PCs) and I was a careful surfer. I had never picked up anything in years and years of computing. Obviously I slipped up somewhere, but it sure wasn’t anything obvious (except trying to close that popup, which I immediately knew was the wrong thing to do, but in that nanosecond I just lost my head).
I STILL have no idea where the one on the desk top came from, and my computer helper never could figure out exactly what the bad bug was. As I said, my Data was saved, and that was my main concern. We just tossed the machine. Maybe a real geek would have never picked anything up. But I think that 3 bugs in 17 years is a pretty good record.