said by vaxvms:said by maartena:a variety of other attacks.
please elaborate
Attacks by malicious website code, most likely found in spam-emails. Anti-virus does NOT always detect these, and remote-access to your computer CAN be granted, and any personal information can be stolen - in the past, hacker websites have abused known OS bugs to do this, but Microsoft has usually been relatively quick in patching serious holes and issues a "critical" security update as soon as these flaws are found, and patches them. This ends this month, as those holes will no longer be patched.
Some experts say hackers have already found security flaws, but won't use them until after April 8th, as they know Microsoft won't issue a patch anymore.
And yes, stealing personal information by use of malicious website code can happen in seconds, and before you even realize you might have clicked a "spam" link and it is too late. Of course, this requires a user that clicks on something, but even the most intelligent computer people get caught unaware sometimes.