a story for you:
About 10 years or so ago, I was still a young pup in IT working at a depot repair and warranty repair shop. We always had a TV on in the shop turned to the news, Fox or CNN. So on the day that the Melissa virus hit, we were watching the news and the developing story in the shop with great interest as we figured we would be doing a few cleanups. About 30 minutes after the story breaks, they interview a rep from Symantec, makers of the popular Norton Anti-Virus. He says, not to worry, Symantec already has a definition update that includes detection/removal for the virus so everyone just needs to do a Live Update and all will be well for Symantec customers. REALLY?? Their guys are so good that they have a fix for this thing across all the MS OSes and its tested and ready for release in 30 minutes? And they expect me to believe they had nothing to do with its development? I am not usually a conspiracy nut, but I fully believe the anti-virus industry is in on making sure they are needed. They are have financial motivation to ensure that there is a never-ending stream of malware that needs their snake oil to cure. I have not used anti-virus software on my personal computers since. I keep up with my windows updates and I practice smart computer usage. No viruses yet.