how does people hack our accounts?

[MAUDE STONER]

I was hacked the other day. I was at Starbucks downloading a program, and some moron got in to my email and sent out all these perverted emails to my friends..haha. I fixed it by changing every password I had. simple.
My brother does computer programming and security for a living and he tells me all kinds of stories of the new ways hackers get into yoru systems, how creative they are.
The newest one is called the "drive by".
You open yoru browser then open yoru search page, say it Bing or Google.
You search for, lets say, "yogurt"!
That brings up may sites that have Yogurt key words on them for you to choose from, as you are scrolling up and down the pages, you have NO clue you are being hacked right then and there.
that is why its a "drive by hacking" they nab you with out you even visiting the site.
I asked how do I stop this, he said get up to date Malware and Spyware. keep them up to date and just be very careful to NOT chase websites while browsing.