[smoyer]

To some degree that's true. I keep an eye out for programs that insist on running as root. And if someone breaches my account, they've still got to put the work in to escalate their privilege through one of these programs.

I've also been installing more and more software into ~/bin rather than the more traditional /opt and /usr/local/bin. I think that the trend towards usermode software will take over in the next five years.

[enitihas]

Usermode software might be far more dangerous though. Any software you run on your machine can change the files in ~/bin, and you won't know the difference.