Each year, tens of thousands of people will be injured or killed in automobile accidents. The costs in terms of personal loss and financial burdens is enormous. For example, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports, "In 2006, 42,642 people were killed in the estimated 5,973,000 police-reported motor vehicle traffic crashes, 2,575,000 people were injured, and 4,189,000 crashes involved property damage. " They report the estimated cost of motor vehicle crashes in the year 2000 alone was over $230 billion (source: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov). When one considers the emotional impact the intangible costs go much higher.
Of course there is an obvious solution to preventing these deaths, costs, and injuries in your own life: leave your car in the garage.
What does this have to do with computing you might ask?
As with your automobile, there's one, extremely easy method for increasing your computing safety and security (paraphrasing Microsoft engineer Charles Fitzgerald): unplug your computer from the internet. No other method has proven as effective at removing risk, reducing spam, preventing viruses, and protecting your personal data.
Unfortunately, a computer unplugged from the internet can be about as useful as, well, a fine automobile that only drives up and down the driveway. For most of us, safety and security are important but not so primary that we would be willing to sacrifice the ability to be online in order to absolutely ensure it.
Like driving, when we're computing, we want to do what we can to ensure we're in the safest situation we can afford without so restricting our experience that we either no longer enjoy it or are no longer able to do it effectively.
