@cartman82 said:
And what's the worst thing that could happen? Really? What, someone's gonna jump out of the computer and stab you to death? Terrorists are gonna take over? No, maybe you'd have to run Antimalware a bit more often than usual. The worst, EXTREMELY remote case scenario is reinstalling the PC. Big deal.
For some of us the worst thing is a lot worse than that and there's a lot of malware that gives no indication of its presence unless you search very hard for it and why would you? A key logger or similar could give root passwords for lots of servers and other important accounts (email, domain registration, thedailywtf, etc) to very unscrupulous and clever people. A criminal type getting hold of them can produce problems that could bring your business to its knees, do massive damage to its (and your) reputation and take months to put right: can you ever be sure they didn't, with the root access they got, put a backdoor in somewhere so your password changes don't stop them?
So it depends what happens on the computer but I dare say that very few computers never get used for logging in to online accounts that are of some importance to somebody. And I also dare say that most who would say "I would never let a worm in, I know how to spot them" are fooling themselves.
That UAC blocks saving the hosts file is quite annoying. It should give the option of elevating permissions at the point of save and it discovers it might need them not only when the program runs. That's true of installers as well. It does seem to me a very crude bodge of a device with little thought to making it user-friendly or smart in any way.
But installing that safe looking freeware m4a to mp3 converter that you need to do in a hurry and finding it's asking for elevated permissions is a good warning to maybe try another one and not have to run process monitor to be absolutely sure it isn't doing something you might deeply regret (if you ever you find out it was this program and this computer that was the root cause of all the pain).
So when you say you've had zero issues, how do you know? Serious question - not facetious or rhetorical. Do you check periodically and if so how? If not then do you expect issues to make themselves known to you in some way and if so what way?