Every year hackers get smarter and sneakier about how to infiltrate people’s computers, steal vital personal information, and spread mischief.

A few years ago, all you had to worry about was malware spread by e-mail attachments. These days, you have to worry about mysterious links showing up in your instant messages, weird messages from Facebook friends you’ve never heard of, and malicious Web sites downloading who knows what to your computer as soon as you visit them.

So what’s a safe Web surfer to do, short of unplugging the computer and conducting all correspondence by carrier pigeon?

• Stay vigilant, no matter what application you’re using.

Hackers are hip to new media and won’t hesitate to use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, or instant messaging to get to you. If you wouldn’t click on a strange link in e-mail, don’t click on it in Facebook.

• Expect spam and phishing to spike around major events or holidays. If a celebrity just died and you get an e-mail containing an attachment purporting to be video of that celebrity’s death – don’t open it.

• Read your e-mail with a VERY skeptical eye. Individuals and corporations have reported being contacted by a service that said it was investigating another company’s registration of a domain under their name. The scammers were obviously just phishing for information. Those e-mails should go straight in the trash.

• Know how to spot a zombie. If your computer sounds like it’s running all the time but processing has slowed to a crawl, or if you find returned messages in your inbox responding to e-mails you’ve never sent – your computer might very well be part of a botnet (zombie army controlled by hackers).

• Watch out for fake security software. Be wary of bogus pop-ups warning that your computer has been infected with hundreds of viruses and that you must immediately download a security tool with names such as “Antivirus2009” to remove them. More often than not, clicking “OK” to install the program will actually install unwanted spyware and cost you more money.

So remember – you’ll probably get an invitation to view a stranger’s photos on Facebook, a few holiday-related spam messages, a suspicious inquiry from an overseas firm, and maybe a pop-up or two asking you if you want to install the latest and greatest in antispyware protection.

The best thing you can do is ignore them, run another backup of your files, do a full system scan, and update your antivirus/antispyware protection with the latest definitions.

Wen Tseng, a Certified Information Systems Security Professional, is the owner of CMIT Solutions of Redmond & Kirkland. For more information, visit www.cmitsolutions.com/redmond or e-mail wtseng@cmitsolutions.com.