most antivirus applications require updated "virus definitions" to run. They aren't smart enough to identify "virus like behavior," so instead they operate off of a known dictionary of viruses. new viruses are discovered (created) every day. So if your virus definitions are from 1998, they won't be very useful in detecting viruses that didn't exist until 2008... this is a common problem i see on lots of home users - they think they have AV installed, so they think they are safe. But if you look closer, you learn that their software subscription expired 2 years ago and that the definitions are 2 years out of date. Essentially they are not protected at all.
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