You don't drive a car without insurance... by the same means you shouldn't *drive* a pc without A/V

It really pees me off when pple say.. *oh I don't have anything worth stealing on my pc* or *I'm careful about what I download/open*.

Okies tell that again to the lady who was in tears in front of me a few months ago, when told that a virus had infected her bios and as such rendered her mobo totally useless. I saw 3 instances of the same virus (CIH variant) in just 2 weeks each time totally writing off the 2 pcs and 1 laptop.

Yes you may be careful what you open or download, but there are plenty of virii (in particular the worms) that don't actually require you to open anything, but will do some automatically within OE.

Some worms such as klez aren't particularly damaging to the pc.. but more of an annoyance and have a longer term payload.

•  These worms can execute themselves
•  They come with their own smtp engines and can replicate themselves to anyone whose details are stored on your pc.
•  They will visit certain sites and sign up your e-mail account to lots of nice spam sites.
•  They can disable existing AV products if your AV patterns aren't up to date and refuse to let any new AV software be installed on your pc.
•  Send themselves out to your friends under a spoofed e-mail address.

Whilst doing my degree, I got sidetracked + undertook research into virii and how they worked, and although I aint no expert, I know enough to understand that even simple virii can have disastrous effects.

People will pay circa £1000 for a pc but moan at spending say £20 to protect it.
There are a few freebies out there so there is no excuse for anyone not to use them - AVG and Housecall to name a couple.

A common misconception is that firewalls can stop you from getting a virus
-FALSE- A firewall protects your pc from external attacks and could pull up trojans, but will be totally ineffective against stmp virii.

To those that say ooh I've never had a virus blah blah blah, just look at the no of pple that do run A/V who say they've pulled up viruses.. If you don't run the software..you wont know until your pc starts behaving weird d'oh!

Unfortunately new viruses are being released every day and we have to trust institutions like symantec and co to keep our data safe.. but nothing is fool proof.

Its best to run A/V to protect against viruses
Firewalls against unauthorised attacks on, and attempts to access your system.
Regularly check your operating system for critical updates.
oh and anti-spyware wont go amiss either

/rant