So I don't have to download and run anything because just by going to the site I am downloading and running something...
You know, I'm always careful what links I follow when I Google and get mail but that is a powerful tool. I mean, there you are, just trying to get some info online, and the next thing you know you click on a link leading to a fake site and get infected if your anti-idiot software doesn't protect you.
I used to work in a place with thousands of people working on their PC's and techs were nonstop scraping crap off of them. One time, we had a 'specialist' come in and was going from machine to machine with a special boot disk to check if PC's were Y2K compliant. I asked him "let me see that thing", pointing at his disk, when he told me what he was doing, and noticed it wasn't write protected and then instantly popped it into my machine for a scan - the scanner lit up like a pinball machine (including being due to several boot sector viruses that he had gathered/propagated along the way...) and I pulled the thing out of the drive and dropped it right into the trash and told him "you ain't using that thing here" and he didn't get it back. I can only imagine how much extra work that caused for us, I mean, he was doing what hackers could only dream would happen..
I never understood the people that did stuff like this just to do harm and that's the only thing they got out of it. No bank account info gathering or corporate sabotage or anything else profitable - they just wanted to cause damage and on any shmo's computer and the more the better. I guess it's like trying to figure out why someone *likes* to do physical damage to another person, too. They just do.