Kaspersky Antivirus Software works.  Let this blogger explain

This blogger has been on Twitter for just over 5 years as of now, and one message I constantly get is this one:

Hi somebody is posting very bad rumors about you…

And I get it multiple times a day, every day.  Here’s something you should not do at all: click on the link that comes with it.  Do not click on it at all, because it contains something called a Malware message.  

Malware messages that the maker uses Twitter to distribute, generally consist of codes that, for the most part, apear to do nothing, until you drill down in the code to see that it actually opens a Flash movie, which can contain what programmers call “exploits” that only work in a version of Flash player that you’re more than likely to run.  Otherwise you could not watch online videos to start with, but because it’s able to do that, it can then dump crap into your computer.  Yep.  Download malware.  

The Blog at Avast.com has a great blog post on this kind of Twitter malware.  

This is where Kaspersky comes in.  It’s specifically designed to combat against this kind of Malware.  In fact, Kaspersky mentioned a blog post on this last year written by Virus News.  It’s called 

Malware in December: Beware Truncated Twitter Links

And has this bit of text you should read:

In the past month the company’s analysts once again recorded a high level of malicious activity. Kaspersky Lab products blocked over 209 million network attacks in December 2010, prevented over 67 million attempts to infect computers via the web, detected and neutralized over 196 million malicious programs and registered almost 71 million heuristic verdicts. …Social engineering and the exploitation of vulnerabilities in legitimate software remained the main methods employed by cybercriminals, though it appears they never cease to hone their skills in other areas. They certainly didn’t pass up the opportunity of jumping on the ‘shortened URL’ bandwagon. Users are increasingly using Internet addresses that have been shortened with the help of special URL shortening services, and they don’t always know that malicious links may be lurking among them. In December the top trends on Twitter’s main page included a number of entries with links that had been shortened using popular services such as bit.ly and alturl.com. After several redirects these links eventually led to infected websites. In another development, the authors of fake antivirus programs have been busy perfecting their tactics, so much so that two of their creations made it into December’s Top 20 malicious programs detected on the Internet – in 18th and 20th places. Genuine antivirus programs are now so effective at detecting their fake counterparts when they attempt to download to users’ computers that the cybercriminals have moved their wares to the Internet instead. In the latter scenario these rogue program don’t need to be downloaded to a computer; users just need to be lured to a fake antivirus website, which is a lot easier than bypassing real antivirus protection.

The bottom line is don’t bypass a real antivirus protection program – get Kaspersky.  

If you’re like me, you’re addicted to your smartphone, tablet, maybe even your laptop. What is your best tip for keeping all of your devices protected? Comment below and you’ll be entered to win a $400 Amazon gift card from Kaspersky Lab.

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of KasperskyLab. The opinions and text are all mine. Official Sweepstakes Rules.