[zotjen]

Pesonally I think it's pretty easy to get a virus even if you're careful. I've had three serious ones in my 15+ years of personal computing. The worst was one where because of an Outlook flaw, I inadvertently emailed the virus to a bunch of people including several co-workers and my boss. I can't remember the name of the virus but we got hit with it at work late one afternoon. I had received an unrelated copy of it at my personal email address and later that evening sent another instance of the virus to my company's network.

On a somewhat related topic, I have to question the capability of my company's tech support staff. A co-worker of mine kept getting pop-ups for adult web sites on her PC and since those types of sites are blocked, her PC would beep incessantly with warning messages and she'd be forced to shut down. This happened about 3 or 4 times a day. Our IT staff said there was nothing on her PC that was causing this but they did install a pop-up blocker which did absolutely nothing. After getting tired of hearing her PC beep, I downloaded AdAware for her. It found over 100 items, and she hasn't had a problem since.

 

[titaniumx3]

I have agree with Computerpro3, because I myself can't understand how people get viruses or spyware onto their comps, but then again I'm the kind who only has three system tray icons and 16 processes at startup.

Fact is most people can't be bothered and have other things to do.

 

[wanderman]

people that get viruses on their computers don't patch/have anti virus or firewall.

edit: downloading p*rn. I think people that switch to mac like chapelle said are chronic masturbaters.

 

[redshifter]

using social engineering i bet even a savvy user could still get an infected file on his machine (as in, leave a bunch of cheap thumb drives in the business' lobby with an infected "wifenaked.mov" file in the root.)

 

[james__bean]

Quote:

Originally Posted by redshifter using social engineering i bet even a savvy user could still get an infected file on his machine (as in, leave a bunch of cheap thumb drives in the business' lobby with an infected "wifenaked.mov" file in the root.)

I remember reading about that.

I have no dillusions about my vulnerabilty to a virus, but I still don't run anti-virus software. I consider windows to be so insecure that there really isn't a point. If a virus writer wants to corrupt my machine, there's really nothing stopping them from doing it. If you don't believe me, check out this video. Hell if I wanted to I could go into any best buy or circuit city and totally destroy the windows installs on any of their display pc's within 3 minutes.

I think most of the spyware, trojans, etc, that people get are simply because they're going onto sites they're unfamiliar with. I browse the same group of sites everyday, I don't download anything from a site I'm unfamiliar with, and I don't use dumb p2p programs like limewire. I also don't open attachments in emails unless I already know whats inside. Just by doing these things I've managed to go 6 years without a virus.

 

[HiGHFLYiN9]

My mom seems to have a nack for finding them. She usually gets them from other hapless victims sending email in her school system email account. Luckily the virus protection software catches most of them.

I used to run without virus protection for the longest time. I would load up the program every now and then, update and scan for any problems and then delete it so it wouldn't waste my precious resources. Finally one day I got a trojan simply by visiting a website in IE and ended up having to reformat Now my work computer isn't connected to the internet at all and the one I do use for the internet has multiple programs running to catch viruses and spyware.

 

[Uncle Erik]

I was extremely careful (firewall, etc.) when I ran Windows a few years back. Didn't open attachments, didn't click on anything stupid, and on and on.

Still, the box got pwn3d. It locked up and wouldn't even let me in. I took it over to a friend's place and we managed to pull my personal files and photos off the drive. Then we wiped the drive and gave it a fresh install of RedHat 7.3. It was terrifying for the first month, but got used to it and haven't looked back.

Not to start an OS war here, but not running Windows is the smartest option, in my book. For those of you who think you're clean, you could still have a rootkit on your machine. It's difficult to tell whether one is there or not and they're good at hiding. For me, the learning curve of Linux was small compared to the unending maintenance and vigilance Windows requires.

I've got a couple of OS X machines, too. No problems with those, either.

 

[james__bean]

Here's an interesting article for those that think their Macbook Pro is invulnerable.