The following is quoted from our esteemed UK associate and prominent Tech Team Member, Paws.
Of the hundreds of excuses he's heard from his customers, these are the top 15 that rolled out:

Most folks (in my experience) say they are very concerned about security, malware and the like........ but in practice fail to take even the most elementary precautions! The main reason being that whilst they say they are concerned...it is slightly inconvenient to take precautions so they don't!....... ........... this is the sort of thing they tell me...........

1. " I like to click on an interesting link in an email ......just to see what it's about you understand."
2. "The firewall has a habit sometimes of slowing down my gaming or making it difficult to connect to another player so I turn it off"
3. "My anti virus runs on boot up and I can hardly use my computer whilst the AV is running...so I turn it off"
4. "The AV definitions take forever to download and this stops me using my machine so I cancel the download"
5. "Ditto for Windows updates"
6. "The permissions screen is a pain so I have switched it off" (Vista)
7. "I just love those cute animated emoticons and other free fun stuff I can download!
8. " My (insert name of P2P) enables me to get all sorts of free stuff.....no need to pay for it"
9. "my daughter downloads all this free music, they teach them at school how to protect themselves, so I don't worry"
10. " my friend/daughter/son has given me a super site (insert crack site URL) where you can get major products for absolutely free, so why pay for it?"
11. " I always use the main administrator account for surfing...its so much easier" (XP)
12. " I know all about back up but the last time I tried it, it took forever...its was several years ago now"
13. " Keep my data on a separate partition and Image my boot drive when it's all working well....sounds too complicated to me"
14. " I use the same password for everything...........makes life so much easier"
15. " It's up to my Internet Service Provider to provide a safe service for me.... that why I pay them £20 per month"