mIRC is great for talking with friends or for meeting new people on the Internet. It doesn`t have annoying ads like other Windows chat programs has, though like any other chat software this can bring you a lot of damages and even loss of files and folders if you don`t have a decent level of protection.
Here is a common scenario, you are new to mIRC, starting to use it for the first time and you want to make new friends. You are joining an IRC Network and you are entering on a channel. An unknown person wishes to send you a file with a cool or strange name. You don`t know that person but actually it`s not a person, it is a `bot` a program that was created by someone who has some bad intentions. It could send you a virus, a Trojan, worm or any other form of spyware, adware, malware. There are a lot of bots that emulate the human behaviour and tries to spread viruses over the IRC networks. The best thing to do is to ignore such messages and also to avoid clicking on such messages. A good antivirus installed on your computer could save you by recognising that file as an virus. If not, you will get your computer infected and you will become another victim.
Do not trust and do not accept files from people that you don`t know on the Internet. This is a general golden rule when we are talking about online protection. Keep your antivirus updated, get yourself a good antispyware software and why not use a good firewall if your antivirus doesn`t have one.
In other normal circumstances, mIRC like any other chat application it is safe to use and you will never be in danger just because you used that program especially. Actually this is also pretty important so make sure that you always use the latest Windows mIRC version since many bugs are being fixed. If you need a trusted source from where you can obtain the latest version you can download mIRC from here.
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