Can you get a virus by watching YouTube?

Asked by: Ian Berry, by email

You should be safe just watching a video but be careful of clicking on ads as these sometimes can turn out to be malicious. In September 2014 scammers served up dodgy adverts on YouTube and other big sites such as Yahoo! and Amazon. The ads redirected users to a website that detected vulnerabilities in their machine’s browser and in applications like Java and Flash. The site then automatically downloaded malware tailored to the computer’s vulnerability.

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