Can My Computer Get An Injection?

This might sound like a bad stand up comedy joke but its true. Injections affect your computer through internet ads. These ads are more than meets the eye, in fact you can’t see the injection — its baked into the ad. Companies often don’t manage their own online ads. They hire a 3rd party to do this for them. The outside ad company may be a very reputable and established business, but then hackers or people looking to do harm injected malicious code onto their ads.

Windows 7 and 8 are actually quite safe these days. The Mac OS X is a very safe operating system, however these injections utilize software that is used to help run other applications on your computers. The software in question is not put out by Microsoft or Apple. The software I am speaking of that is often used as a conduit for the injections is Java or Flash. You’ve heard me talk about these two names before. They are legitimate programs that most of us have used for years. For example — most YouTube videos run on Flash. Some online games, work sites, and other websites run on Java. However, versions of Flash and Java that aren’t updated can be a major problem.

For Mac owners — Apple will automatically disable unsafe versions of Flash and Java if a problem is suspected. Current versions of Flash get automatically updated. If you need Java, you can get it from www.java.com
For Windows owners — you have to take a bit more action on your own. By going to your Control Panel (usually from the Start Menu) you should be able to get to your Adobe Flash (if installed). There is a button there to check if its updated. If you have the latest version as of today — it should update automatically in the future. Java is a bit more tricky. Most of you — I believe — do not need Java. You can go to Control Panel > Programs and simply uninstall Java if its there. If you really need Java later on you have to keep it updated. You will be notified of updates. Don’t ignore those updates. The latest version of Java can be downloaded from www.java.com.