You aren't paranoid.
They've found ways to embed some awful -invisiable- stuff into websites.
I don't go to "bad places" yet have had things load themselves onto my PC without knowledge several times.
I have no idea what sites they came from so apparently even some "nice" websites are affected.
[I suspect the rock song lyric sites I visited since I've gotten alerts from some of them]
It's getting to be nerve-wracking out here.
Music sites and porn sites seem to be the worst. I have everybody and his brother in here using my computer when I'm out, and before I put in all the spyware blockers I used to get a ton of stuff from Kazaa and other music downloading activities. I had to edit the Registry by hand, and sometimes it took a couple of days to get rid of it.