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Tuesday, Consumer Reports' WebWatch "Look Before You Click" education campaign, released data from its statewide survey of over 2,000 Internet users revealing some disturbing news.

"Almost a quarter of New York State Internet users in the study encountered a badware infection on their computers over the past year," said WebWatch director Beau Brendler.

Badware, also known as spyware or malware, infects computers from a number of sources, most commonly websites and unsolicited emails. A lot of badware is simply annoying, slowing your computer down or creating unwanted pop-up advertisements, but some pose a real danger.

"They can install things like keyloggers on your system which will actually keep track of every letter that you type and then transmit that information to a third party, who can then use it to figure out what all the passwords to your bank accounts," explained Brendler.

You may think you're safe if you don't surf the web, but experts say that's not true; spyware can be transmitted from the most unsuspecting places.

"We also found in our research that digital picture frames that you might buy at Costco or whatever, a whole lot of them came pre-infected from the manufacturer with very nasty spyware," said Brendler. "We bought one of those off of Ebay and sent it out to be tested and we were very surprised to find out the degree of maliciousness of the spyware we found imbedded in this picture frame. So obviously the idea is when you plug the thing into your computer to try to load your pictures on it puts a nasty little thing on there that does things to your machine."

"The bottom line is you need to know who you're dealing with online," said Charles Bell of the Consumers Union. "If you don't know the company or business or the website that you're working with that's a real danger sign. Don't respond to unsolicited email and phishing scams. Make sure that you have software for firewalls, anti-virus and anti-spyware, that it's turned on and working.

The New York State Public Interest Research Group also works to protect consumers online through its education effort, CyberStreetSmart.org.

For more information on how to stay safe online, visit Consumer Reports Webwatch at consumerwebwatch.org.