I've noticed that some people tend to have recurring problems - they run out of gas, they overspend on their credit cards, they have problems with kids, they have traffic accidents or ticket problems, etc, . It's not that some people have all of these problems, but rather some people seem to be prone to having recurring problems of one sort or another. This seems to be true of malware infections too. While there can be an element of good/bad luck involved, there's also (in my view) an issue of recognizing when a particular practice leads to an unwanted consequence, then a rational thing to do is to change your actions. Maybe I'm lucky, but my security software and reasonable but not OCD practices avoid malware problems entirely. I don't read about it, follow it, or lose sleep or worry about it. I'm sure future incidents will occur, but prevention is easy and recovery is also easy. Desktop linux use is proposed by enthusiasts but seems to be dead on arrival. The percentage usage is tiny and not growing- if you rounded off, it rounds to zero. Even in enterprise settings where linux expertise is available from IT departments, there seems to be little interest in it.

Yacheryl, I was having a hard time also to find virus protection for a couple of my older computers. I now have "Avast" on my ME laptop (128 ram) and it works great. I put "Avira AntiVir" on the 98 computer and it works fine.

Hmm, FixMeStick - never heard of that one before. Of note : "Not a replacement for anti-virus software which protects PCs from infections, the FixMeStick is for removing infections that got past the anti-virus." About Norton . . . . there are various mentions on av-comparatives.org that Symantec had elected not to participate, although it's not stated as the general reason it's not included so it's a bit of a mystery. I think Aputernut's main point there was to remove any existing AV program before installing another. However, despite that it may work well for some users, it has a reputation in the IT fixit world as being (historically) heavy on resources, and very difficult to remove. It even requires a separate special tool to remove it completely. On the other hand, since a lot of people use it, it probably generates more complaints just by the raw numbers. Your mileage may vary. The problem is, once a program gets a reputation, many people may move away from it and continue to stick with their last impression of it. It's hard to keep up with every iteration of a program. Case in point . . . Internet Explorer, which really lagged for a very long time, but now has somewhat caught up with the competition. Nevertheless, it's left such a bad impression a lot of people won't touch it, myself included. This post was edited by kbarb on Sun, Oct 26, 14 at 11:55

"Devices" are different than personal computers, which is what most people own, unless you're considering a PC to be a device. But I think you're referring to Javascript - a completely different animal. Youtube uses either Flash or HTML5 - not Java. What program(s) - specifically - are you using that require Java ? I've had Java onboard for over 10 years, and have only had to use it once that I remember, for something very non-essential. I keep it blocked in the browser for security reasons, and have never had to unblock it - for youtube or anything else. If you're one of the few users that need it, then install it and keep it up to date, but it's not really in use anymore, if at all, so in general most security advisers recommend that people not install it. In addition, if you're going to install it, I would use a tool to block it in the browser until needed there - something like QuickJava for Firefox. See : Java Patch Plugs 19 Security Holes - Brian Krebs "seriously consider removing Java altogether. I have long urged end users to junk Java unless they have a specific use for it (this advice does not scale for businesses, which often have legacy and custom applications that rely on Java). This widely installed and powerful program is riddled with security holes, and is a top target of malware writers and miscreants."