Sounds like a conservative anti-virus strategy is to avoid using any products and/or turn off any options that automatically allow something on your PC to `process'' any incoming data from the internet - be it from a web page, email, ftp, news, etc. That is, stay away from auto - java, javascript, visual basic scripting, image decompression and rendering, file associations that run program X when you see file extension, y -- etc.
Interestingly I just read a article about the return to popularity of usenet news, in large part because so much if it is plain, raw, unprocessed text and partly because you can fetch so much that is advertising and eye candy free. No we just have to worry and await the hackers figuring out how to make computers that display ascii characters run nasty executables - oh and be sure and remove that ansi driver from your dos setup files!
