Peeves me as well - protecting your computer is becoming a job in itself. Your story is not unique, I run into it here at work and at home on the wife and kid's computers.... innocent seeming searches that turn up what looks like a site that might have the info you want, but turns out it has: malicious code to hijack your browser, hijack your search function, possible trojans worms viruses hidden in seemingly innocent pictures, etc. etc. One thing you can watch for when you search for things, and looking a t the results - if the result shows anything that looks remotely like it might be a result from a DIFFERENT search engine... don't go there. Panda Software is very good, and with Pest Patrol and Adaware you can be fairly safe, along with a firewall like ZoneAlarm. You may also want to look into Peer Guardian, as part of what it blocks is known spamming sites / ad generator sites and other evilness ( in addition to its original function to provide some security for file sharing / networking )
