"we all pay a price as a result of users who simply dont care."To pick up on that briefly, I'd take note kicktd. There are many types of viruses which make you load "GTBots" on to IRC networks - they can then be used for attacking (Distributed Denial of Service attacks) users, websites and indeed, IRC networks. I have, sadly, watched DALnet decline from a 140,000 strong user network to 35-40,000 (although DDoS attacks weren't the only contributors to that, it was the reason for about 75% of the loss).
In a perfect world where nobody was infected with a virus,
billions of dollars/pounds/whatever-currency would have been saved in costs against individuals and corporate networks, not to mention days, weeks and months of people's free time - would you like being woken up at 4am by your boss saying to "get to the office now to get the website back online, someone's attacking it"? Unfortunately, a lot more than your hard drive can be lost from being infected.
Think before you act
Regards,
