Email:
An overwhelmingly large proportion of infections today are caused by infected email attachments. The ease with which a user can click on an attachment and launch an application is a significant factor in the spread of email-borne viruses. If the email content is sufficiently inviting (e.g. 'kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me.') and the visible attachment extension sufficiently innocent in the eyes of an average user (e.g. LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs - text files cannot carry an infection, can they?), the temptation for a user can become overwhelming. The danger of infection through attachments is, of course, not confined to email. Newsgroup postings are number of new infected attachments currently discovered by automated newsgroup scanners is around 10 per day.
World Wide Web:
The web is crawling with sites carrying virus-infected material. Desktop access to the web is not only technologically possible but also viewed as an 'expected' in today's workplace. Downloading potentially infected files is too easy.
Floppy disks and CDs:
The use of floppy disks has decreased radically with the advent of networks, but most PCs still come with a floppy drive fitted as standard. 3% of all infections are due to boot sector viruses, which shows that floppy disks are not dead (yet). CDs (especially magazine cover CDs) have also been shown to be relatively frequent virus carriers.
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