Comment on can a hacker hack my accounts remotely??

• BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Most people consider any sort of “thing installed or running on my computer against my knowledge doing bad stuff” to be a virus.

  That’s why the OP said “installing any virus in my computer”

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  • zeppo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    A virus is specifically malware that automatically spreads to other devices. It’s similar to a worm. They tend to spread surreptitiously using vulnerabilities or design flaws. To me that’s quite different than installing a shady browser plugin, and imo it’s better to use the term malware to make it clear privacy violating browser extensions are something people unfortunately choose to install, unlike a virus.

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    • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      A lot of the shady browser extensions don’t start shady, they get bought from the original creators and updated into something malicious.

      Either way, your average non-technical person couldn’t tell you the difference, so it hardly matters.

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      • zeppo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        That’s true, but it’s still not a virus and I’m not going to use an inaccurate term just because other people don’t understand the distinction.

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