Scared of using the internet

[Abion47]

Lately, I've actually been a bit worried every time I log into my email or Facebook, for fear that some sort of virus will be downloaded, or I'm going to get hacked... Am I being too irrational? I used to use a PC and seemed to get all sorts of nasty things constantly, but it's been okay so far now that I switched to Mac.

Are the hackers winning this war?

There are several misconceptions here.

First, a "virus" as you would think about is all but extinct. The only viruses that still exist are ones that are easily avoided by practicing common sense on the internet - don't open any suspicious links, don't click on ads, and don't install anything that you don't know where it came from. The latest versions of both Windows and Mac are pretty good against shielding from those kinds of attacks, but there's only so much they can do against viruses that you are deliberately (if unknowingly) installing yourself.

Second, a Mac is not the safer operating system because it does anything special, but rather there's little point in writing malware that specifically targets Macs. People who write malware generally do so because they are trying to get something out of their victims. In that sense, Windows PCs are the natural target, since the market share of Windows is far greater than that of Mac. And since Windows PCs and Mac PCs are fundamentally different, there are virtually no examples of OS-level malware that run on both.

Third, by far the greatest danger in the current age of computers is not malware, but phishing. This is where someone tries to trick you into giving up your email, your credit card number, or other personal information. They could also be tricking you into connecting your computer to their servers, which gives them your computer's address and allows them to connect to you directly. The biggest misconception about hackers is that they cannot just randomly decide to connect to your computer on a whim. They need to first know how to connect to your computer at all, and then they need to get past the computer's built-in security. This requires that A] they have installed something on your computer that grants them access (which requires that they have physical access to your computer), or B] that you have given them enough information via their phishing attempts to bypass the security measures. No hacker is going to try and brute-force their way through a firewall, since that process is far too difficult and time-consuming.

Fourth, the vast majority of major websites like Google and Facebook use encrypted connections. What this means is that all of your data, from the instant it leaves your computer to the instant it arrives at the website's servers, is a garbled mess. Even if someone was eavesdropping on your internet traffic, all they would see is a bunch of nonsense. The way that encryption works is that both your computer and the target server have a key that they use to "unscramble" the data. Without this key, it can be virtually impossible to decipher encrypted data, depending on the exact form of encryption used. (And all reputable browsers and major sites will use only current encryption methods that have yet to be cracked.)

In conclusion, your fears are justified, in that there are plenty of people out there that would love to get their hands on your computer if only to steal your financial information and add your computer to their DDOS network. Contrary to popular belief, however, this is not something that will just happen randomly, but rather as a direct result of careless browsing practices. Downloading antivirus programs is a good backup measure, but I've found that the vast majority of "malware" that those programs prevent are just tracking cookies, annoying little bits of code installed from various commercial sites but by themselves are mostly harmless.