• Their anti-virus programs blocks 1 billion malware a month. That’s 1,000,000,000 attempts to install viruses, trojans, password stealers, etc on to people’s PCs. A month. And that’s just by one small company.
• 1 in 15 people encounter a malware every day.
• They find about 3,000 new malware each day (that’s new and unique viruses, trojans, etc). They have 2.1 million in their database.

These statistics are not just marketing numbers, they give you an idea of how serious a problem malware is. If you don’t have a good anti-virus system installed on your computer they you need to take action now (today) and install something to protect you. Good anti-virus systems generally cost money – it’s a good investment, the cost of not buying one is usually greater.

And get something from a known vendor. Last week I talked about a comparison of anti-virus programs, you can use this as a guide.

And Macs and Linux computers aren’t safe either.

Further evidence of the need for antivirus software on Macs is given by Apple themselves. They’ve made their own antivirus software for the latest version of OS X (called Snow Leopard). This built-in antivirus software is very limited at the moment:

• It can only scan files downloaded from a small number of programs (so it doesn’t scan “everything”), and
• At the moment it can only detect 2 trojans

If you’re a Mac user you can read more here. My point is that you should do everything possible to protect your computer from malware, scams, etc. Assuming that your computer is somehow superior and invulnerable just doesn’t cut it.