[LINK] European computer virus stats

[Michael Skeggs mike@bystander.net]

On 9 February 2011 09:42, Stilgherrian <stil at stilgherrian.com> wrote:
> On 09/02/2011, at 9:17 AM, Ivan Trundle wrote:
>> 'Almost one third of internet users in the European Union caught a PC virus despite the majority having security software installed, statistics show.'
>>
>> This implies to me that anti-virus software is a joke, or mostly irrelevant. Or am I missing something int he statistics?
>
> If we assume for the moment that the writer is using "PC virus" to include all kinds of malware, including trojans, then the number is probably about right. Traditional signature-based anti-virus simply can't be updated fast enough to keep pace with all malware, and of course it can't defend against people clicking on "OK" to install some random piece of software they stumbled across.
>

"My computer has a virus" is the catch cry of every low skilled user.
My sister-in-law posted on Facebook she was going to buy a new laptop
because her old one was broken because of a virus.
I got her to drop it round, and it was running dead slow, but because
the disk was partitioned into two drives, and C was full (of course D
was empty).
Emptying the recycle bin and moving iTunes to D helped, but her
Windows directory has grown to 20Gb+ so in another year or so of OS
updates there will be room for nothing else on that partition.

Regards,
Michael Skeggs