[paulycy]

The reality is that the new botnet malware is very discrete. You could easily be infected and not know it.

Uh, actually that's extremely unlikely in my case but I'm not going to argue. I just offered my personal experience. YMMV.

[Knitebane]

Uh, actually that's extremely unlikely in my case

Not unless you reinstall your OS from known, clean media on a regular basis.

Malware scanners and anti-virus software only help you after you get infected and only if the software can detect the malware. Malware writers have become exceedingly good at evading detection.

Report: 48% of 22 million scanned computers infected with malware

That's half. One out of two. So here's the experiment:

Ask the person next to you if they are infected with malware. If they say no, then it's you.