If you're a responsible surfer, you probably won't suffer much infection, but if you receive heaps of spam emails and happen to have someone in the household "click" on them, well then that's where the fun begins...
If you have good internet security Cal, it warns you before opening anything in your inbox, I get a red box warning alert as soon as anything suspicious lands in my email, quite simple really, I've never had a virus and never had a problem with spam and never had a malware program on my system, I also have a great mate who is a very good computer tech... 
Yep, household mates who are good techs is a plus, but the Achilles heel of all malware programs is that they must recognize a virus, malware program, or PUP, RAT and so on. That is what critical: their knowledge base of what's bad. The product I mentioned uses a local algorithm to calculate the legitimacy of the binary files, and not a database, whitelist, or signature list.
Not trying to start a malware religious war, but I assure you, I could send you files that your program would pass and that you would open, and that would fcuk you up. It's (secure computing) been my industry for 28 years, trust me.
It would have to be a dedicated attack from someone I know big fella, and I would still have to open it on my system
, I don't open anything I wasn't expecting, I have several email accounts, they get used according to who it is i'm expecting a response too, I'm very cautious, besides, if opened in a Mail washer program, its opened out side my computer so can't effect it one little bit.. . I know if my system is specifically targeted from outside it can be done, I'm not naive or stupid, but as i'm set up, and have been for a very long time, I feel secure, far more so that most, and thats all that counts.. I'm curious, what anti virus do you use...?
