A hacker's tacklebox contains plenty of phishing lures

One of a hungry hacker's favorite tools for feeding his appetite is the phishing scam. 

No, it's not about hooking a fish - but it is about reeling in a big catch.  The goal is to steal your personal information.

Whether it's through email, texts or on social media, sooner or later you will run into messages that try to trick you into clicking on links to malicious websites, advertisements and so on.

But what is a malicious site anyway?  Do you know?

A malicious site is a site that tricks you into giving away information or downloading a virus.  Or it might have code that finds and exploits security holes in your computer.  If the site can find a security hole, then it can download a virus to your computer and install it without any action on your part.

You won't even know it's happened.       

Even a perfectly legitimate site can become malicious if hackers trick the ad network it uses to run infected ads.  If the hackers have done their job right, detecting a malicious site isn't easy.  That's why you need to protect yourself at all times.