All these fake sites and applications are becoming a bigger problem. The latest is called removal-tool . com (warning, do not try going to this site). It appears to be a collection of spyware removal tools except that it actually tries to install quite a few different bits of malware on your computer. It’s a malicious web page in disguise.
The web site looks nice, contains a blog, a news section, and reviews. The authors went to some effort to make it look convincing. Most of the links on the site even work. It would be difficult to tell that this site will compromise your computer.
Good anti virus software these days has the option to filter all web pages and they stop most of these sites before your web browser starts loading them. It’s a good investment.
Another technique to avoid these traps is to use a less popular web browser such as Firefox or Opera, or to use a less popular operating system such as Mac OS or Linux.
At the moment the majority of malicious code is designed to target Windows and Internet Explorer. That’s not to say that other systems are immune, malware is just less common on them.