I've got an old junker of a PC (came with Windows ME) that I used to surf the internet for about two months with no antivirus stuff whatsoever. I installed the latest Norton on it last week and expected it to be totally overun with viruses and spyware. But you know what? I ran the scan and it came up perfectly clean. A few years ago I had another old PC that I ran "bareback" on the Net, this time for about two years. And again, no viruses (actually I can't say this with total certainty -- I never scanned it -- but it never acted like it was infected with anything.).
You hear stories about computers being targeted within seconds when they're connected to the internet unprotected. I'm starting to think this is mostly fearmongering by outfits like Norton trying to sell antivirus products.
No, Yardstick. My homeschooled son had his own in-home computer business from the time he was 15 to 18. He made big money building, repairing PCs (although he was a serious Mac fanatic) I've seen it happen. In less than 60 seconds computers would be infected with viruses. Before he could upgrade on the net. He learned the HARD way. I saw it happen several times.
Now we're all Mac fanatics here, and I'm trying to get my bestest friend to switch. :D
Windows ME and earlier had problems with multitasking (running more than one program at a time[*]) and so most spyware programs are designed for Windows 2000 and later. That's why you never had any trouble.
Unfortunately, getting a modern PC kills you. I have about six friends with modern PCs and every one of them has some kind of virus/spyware problem. In my experience, it's difficult to impossible to bring a computer with a severe infection back to life.
Most Freepers are relatively computer savvy from what I see "on the ground" with average people. Average people don't know how to use anti-virus/spyware software and turn their computers off at night so it doesn't run automatically. This creates constant virus problems in my experience even when malware softwre is installed and (theoretically) operational.
D
[*] In this context, that means actively running - so if your web browser is loading a page and you click on an email, you're running two programs at once even if you have a bunch of others waiting for input. Windows ME handles the latter situation just fine, the former not so great. The virus/spyware program has to run in the background and so it tends not to be compatible with ME and earlier.