Protect your device from malicious ads

The chances of encountering a malware-bearing ad on your phone or tablet are increasing. But blocking ads on mobile is neither easy nor very effective. Here's a better approach to ad-blocking on your device.

Much attention has been paid this week to the Heartbleed security hole that has affected hundreds of thousands of Web servers. Read staff writer Richard Nieva explain how you can protect yourself from the Hearbleed bug.

In a nutshell, the best protection is to change your Web passwords. All of them. In a post from December 2011, I explained how you can master the art of passwords.

There's not much consumers can do to guard against infected servers, but there's plenty we can do to prevent becoming the next victim of the growing legion of malware purveyors. In a nutshell, don't click that link. This goes double for links in apps on our mobile devices, which generally aren't as well protected as PCs.

According to the Cisco Security Blog's March 2014 Threat Metrics released earlier today, advertising is the most likely source of malware on mobile devices, increasing from 13 percent of mobile malware occurrences in February 2014, to 18 percent last month. Business sites were the source of 13 percent of mobile malware encounters in March, down from 20 percent the previous month; video sites accounted for 11 percent of mobile infections in the most recent month, compared to only 7 percent in the preceding month, according to the report.

Don't be tricked into a malicious click

Security vendor Blue Coat Systems' 2014 Mobile Malware Report points out the increasing danger of ads on mobile devices. According to the report, Web ads supplanted pornography as the most frequent source of mobile malware, accounting for just under 20 percent of all mobile "threat vectors" in February 2014, compared to only 5.7 percent in November 2012; porn-based threats decreased to 16.5 percent of mobile malware encounters from more than 22 percent in the earlier period.