Following Safe Browsing Practices

Based on one recent survey of crashes submitted via the Online Crash Analysis tool in Windows XP, Microsoft concluded that roughly half of reported failures in the Windows operating system are directly traceable to what it calls "deceptive software."

How does deceptive software end up on a computer? The simplest route is the most direct: you click a link on a Web page or in an e-mail message that leads directly to an executable file. An advertisement might make extravagant claims about a free program (often written as an ActiveX control). When an unsophisticated computer user clicks that ad, the program offers to install itself via a Microsoft Authenticode dialog box, which can easily be mistaken for an official ...

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