According to a 2004 article in USA Today, "Symantec, McAfee, Internet
> Security Systems, and Trend Micro grew from nothing to a combined
> market capitalization topping $24 billion by supplying anti-virus
> software to a hungry market."
> With that much money to be made from the fear of virii, is it any
> wonder that we're all being conditioned to be afraid of them?
> Even though your credit card is most at risk when handled by a minimum
> wage waiter in a tourist trap restaurant, we are constantly bombarded
> with warnings about cybercrime. Here's the news: it wasn't a virus
> that "lost" the SS#s of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and
> veterans; it wasn't a trojan horse download that encouraged a
> for-profit data vendor to sell personal records to organized
> criminals.
Well said. At this point, virus protection is big business, and lots of companies would go out of business if viruses actually died out.