What Not to Do?

After reading quite a bit of information here, I'm still confused about exactly what not to do.

I'm an avid gardener and belong to a few garden web site forums. During the course of my readings there are countless links to other sites, gardener's personal websites with pictures, garden store sites, etc., etc. Sometimes I click on the link or I have the link open in a new window or I copy the link to my notepad to view at a later time and then copy and paste it to my address bar. I also look at the pictures that other gardeners have uploaded to the forum which are listed as picture.jpg. Today I googled "dehydrator" (for food) and about 90 links came up and I clicked and looked at quite a few of them.

Am I asking for trouble by clicking on "any" link that I'm interested in looking at? Can I get malware or a virus from just looking at a site? I don't ever click on popups. What about sites that have catalogs or manuals that are .pdf files? My computer is protected by the protection software recommended here at MG for av and mw, do they protect me when I click on any and all links that I want to go to?

When using Earthlink email, I elect to check my mail and then it is downloaded and I can automatically view it, though I don't click on attachments unless I was expecting one. Is this a bad thing, having the whole email downloaded? I wouldn't know how to set it up to look at titles only if this is the case.

Thank you in advance for your expertise.

 

What antivirus program, what antispyware realtime blocking program, and what firewall are you using?AVG, Zone Alarm, Ad Aware and SpyBot.

Thanks for your response, a few more questions.

Can I get malware or a virus from just looking at a site?

What about sites that have catalogs or manuals that are .pdf files?Are .pdf files downloads and can they carry virus', etc.?

 

Thank you for your answers to my questions. I'll check into getting a malware protector since the AdAware I have is the free version.