What are your risks? How can you better protect yourself? What your going to do about it!

What are your risks?
Risk's can vary, according to what the sorce of something is, to what created this issue.
2014, during the last month of the year. This group was created the following day, after a attempt to steal my personal belongings, and attempt to hack my friends was made.
The tests so far show i am in the clear. But it does not mean i am 100% safe.

Do you want to be the cause of your friends getting hack? I don't think you do.
To protect yourself, and being aware of any risks from anyone on your friends list, you need to know what to do!

How can you better protect yourself?
When talking with your friends, never directly click any links you don't know you can trust. The only links to be certain you won't get a hack attack from are inside of youtube. Facebook, Imagur and other sites can pose a risk, depending on what file is being downloaded.
The link i clicked on that almost stole all my stuff and infect my friends, said it was a .png file at the end of the link. turns out the file was really a .scr which is a form of .exe file, but was originally designed for a screen saver. Thus why it has the name .scr
To prevent getting infected, their are some rules you can follow around any links.

1: If you see any link from a friend, know that the friend is really talking to you, and that the friend really sent it.
2: Know the source of that link. This only gives your one step more towards knowing if its safe or not.
3: Using a virtual machine, and a phoney steam account, you can see what it will do. (This step is the only one i am aware of, and could be changed at a later date)
4: If safe, you can use it inside the machine (safety first) or use it on your real machine. (If it can tell the diffrence between virtual and acctual computor, your not that safe!)

If you have any better way to defend yourself, it would be worth shareing it, and checked by people that know what their doing, till its verifyed that its safe.
Note: Having a second computor which is designed to test in a enviroment with steam is the best option, considering its isolated, and it will be easy to identify any risks from phoney cons.


What your going to do about it!
Protect myself against any virus's, and make sure that anything that is downloaded can not just run itself out of the blue. I want windows to ask if i give permission for it to be open'd and executed.
What i am going to do this day forward to any links i get, will be to completely ignor it until i know its safe. Otherwise i will remove persons and post on their profile "Unfriended".

Having friends on your list that you don't communicate with and do not know i would reccommend removing. Their is no point taking that extra risk that will make it possible for someone to get hacked.

Not all infomation is here. Check groups please.