[khedoros]

Do they, though? Everything I've read over the past 5 years has claimed an 80-90% miss rate. On the other hand, often the first sign I see of an infection is that the virus scanner is disabled, so I suppose it acts as a kind of canary, in that sense.

[01Michael10]

I can't really argue with you if just going to make up stats... I have been helping non-tech savvy family, friends, and co-workers for over 25 years. The ones who didn't have AV installed or let the one that came with the PC expire had a almost 100% infection rate. Once I installed a good AV product infection issues with most of them was not an issue again. Yes, nothing stops stupidity 100%.

[khedoros]

25 years ago, I'd be right with you. 15 years ago, too. Since then? I think your anecdata are outdated. Things just aren't going to be caught by signature-based scanning anymore. In terms of automated detection, the bad guys won. "Good" AV detection, if there is such a thing these days, are the tiny vendors that infections aren't designed specifically to fight against. All the big names get disabled, or otherwise rendered non-functional.