How do I help malware succeed?

[bananaman]

Malware cannot be successful without people. What are the top human factors which contribute to malware's success? 

For example, something I learned, many times over, because I'm IT support for my family: The human factor is young children exploring the Internet, clicking on everything. The advice is don't let them do it on your work PC .

Seriously, how do we best influence the human factors?

[Bugbatter]

I think a lot of it is because people are trying to get something that is too good to be true -- free items including videos, music, coupons, software from dubious sites, cracked software, etc..

How do we influence the human factor? I'm not sure. It is hard to break bad habits of adults.

[Aiscer]

As Bugbatter pointed out its really hard to break old habits and most times it's because anything "free" has a very appealing nature to it. I advise to be very wary of freeware or shareware most things free has a most probable potential of an infection bundled or can wreck havoc on your system.

For children though I employ safety nets such as a Standard User account, Parental Controls and Windows Live's Family Safety so I can monitor their online activities and protect them from the cyber-bullies out there.