I know what you are tryint to say,...but really,...
Catching a virus on IRC is only possible in following ways:
- DCC traffic (always turn on "show warning" if you receive a DCC request or ignore them all) (when using mIRC)
- IRC bots can send you pm's with hyperlinks which refer to malicious files like
http://yaddayadaa/this_jpg_is_infected.jpg. It's up to you if you click on them or not. I recommend you to use Firefox instead of IE, cause most of these "virusses" are harmless when using Firefox.
Anything else but that virus infections by simply chatting is not possible.
There are some scripts that, if you click on them when you receive them private, a user can chat with your
nickname,.... but,...that's it
If you want to be more safe,...use a BNC with additional vhost:
this is what you see if you performa a /whois command on me on IRC:
So, if somebody would perform a /dns he would get the IP off the Linux server where my shell is installed!
So he or she will not get your home IP!
hope this helps,...