Hi malware fighters,
It is as bad as some say, or even worse, 30 % of consumers buy a new PC because of a malware infection on their previous machine.
Most average consumers think security software is a drag, and as annoying as the annual visit to the dentist. They know you really should, but it will cost you CPU, some pay money towards it and overall scanning is slow - these are the main reasons why people do not like av-scanners, firewalls, and anti-malware solutions in general. Also nagging pop-up messages one does not understand and not being up to use these software proggies properly make that some 30 % of consumers think security software does not deliver what it should.
A Trend Micro survey recently found that normal users absolutely do not know how to use security software. A third of consumers had problems with either their av solutions or their firewall software. 17% of users with an infected computer decided to do a full hard disk re-format, another 30% found no better solution as to dump the infected machine and buy a new one. Despite of this opposition still a majority of people thought anti-malware programs to be necessary.
This all shows that the majority of normal users does have the greenest clue as what they are doing behind a computer keyboard, so the main security risk is complete ignorance and the saddest thing is these users are not even aware of this or the need to change it,
polonus
