Well... You could install VMware and then install a linux guest. You could surf away with impunity on the guest with no risk to the host machine. Maybe a little more work than its worth though.

But I do agree with the general fact that adding all the spyware blockers/av software and so on is counter-productive to the point of ludicrous. The amount of resources that most of these products use is higher than than most spyware. You can stop most all threats by not using IE, not using an email client and using a web email interface, not opening attachements unless you are expecting them, and only downloading stuff from reputable sources.

Back to Ubuntu - I love the actualy multi user setup. EVeryone can have their passwords saved, etc, but since everyone has their own user account it is all encrypted. Whoever is looking at porn could save all their porn in their encrypted home folder and no one else could even see it (even an admin!) unless they have that users password. Beautiful, technically.

Security on a good router.

AVG Free for Virus.

AdBlock plus on FireFox, and disable IE for their user account.

MalwareBytes to clean it out/maintain.

I`m sure youcan do more those were just on top of my head.

Not totally true. A good admin - who knows how to use /proc to access memory directly, and the dd command - can catch you in the act. You may have things encrypted on disk, but they are unencrypted while in memory. Also, a good admin can access every keystroke you make and gain your password that way.

Basically, it's tough to unencrypt something static (on the harddrive). So you wait for the user to do the unencrypting for you and then pounce on the unencrypted data while it's in ram. Or you use keylogging or man-in-the-middle techniques to covertly steal their encryption key and then have your way with them.

You are never safe from a good admin!

And yet one of the first things I do on Windows boxes that are running slow is to do a simple cleaning. CCleaner is pretty good and it is free. Followed by install a few select programs. Even after the cleaning it is not uncommon to end up dumping a good amount of malware, viruses. Invariably once removed the machines are much faster. The actual overhead of most of these programs is minimal, often little more than the space used on the HD. This is because they are not active until activated for use. I usually even turn off the auto update features. It means you have to remember to update them, once a week is usually good enough.

The burden of running a Windows machine is that it is vulnerable to this sort of thing. And always will be. And IE cannot actually be entirely disabled if you're running a current Windows OS. You could do it in Win95, perhaps early incarnations of Win98, but it was subsequently integrated so it could be claimed to be 'part of the OS'. Thanks MS. You can restrain it and keep it from doing certain things but it is always there. An endless series of back doors that can never be entirely sealed shut.

I was going to suggest getting a subscription to a reputable porn vendor. The porn will be better quality than what can be found for free, and the risk of malware is negligible.

Worked for a small company where I was one of the two IT people. Boss came in one morning and said he got some malware on his computer, where does that come from and we both said porn sites at the same time.
I've actually had to clean more crap off from people who use yahoo services than anything else.

Do you want to block porn? nannyware
Do you want to resist malware? Anti-virus. ( the free ones are often just as good as a subscription)

and then there's mac.

[quote=TeacherRO

and then there's mac. [/quote]

^^THIS^^

Once you go mac, you never go back.

Don't fall for the buy a mac stuff, for one thing the cost is still too high, the limitations too great and service and company still treat you like crap. Despite all the magazines rating them so much higher those of us in IT see that they have just as many issues, just different ones. The surveys where they get their information are flawed because when they survey people they usually get the home user who bought the cheapest pc the retail store had and don't hear about the thousands of them in the corporate world.