Maybe a variation of that advice would help keep computer germs at bay, since computer viruses have been popping up lately faster than a politician's promises at election time. I suppose weeks of virus alerts blaring in the headlines made virus paranoia inevitable.
Contamination fears aside, simply surfing the Web, reading e-mail or chatting is still safe.
Understanding how you get a virus is the first step in avoiding them. Treating computer viruses is like battling the common cold. The industry works to develop antibodies against it, but a new resistant strain soon surfaces. But unlike the sniffles, a computer virus is a man-made phenomena. It's simply a computer program written by an individual and launched for a specific purpose.