Hold on, because installing AV in 1995 would not have done a whole lot more to protect you than installing in 2016 does. I was peripherally involved in the virus scene in the early 1990s --- in that I had close friends who were more than peripherally involved --- and my recollection is that AV was as much a joke then as it is now.
I had the pleasure of working for an antivirus company for a few years after they bought my firm. We were in the security group for that company. The antivirus people might as well have been in a different universe; there was no input from security whatsoever.
I think parent was talking about more fundamentally though. There were good and bad AV software back in the 1990s too. I think Vess was involved in macro viruses detection back in the 1990s.
Vess wrote quite a bit about The Dark Avenger. I'd go so far as to say they had a rivalry. (I guess I just assumed most people knew who Vess is. He was certainly a name I knew from my reckless teenage years...)
I don't know that there was ever good AV, at least not in the terms that Schuh is talking about. That's interesting about Vess, though; where did you find that out?
I had the pleasure of working for an antivirus company for a few years after they bought my firm. We were in the security group for that company. The antivirus people might as well have been in a different universe; there was no input from security whatsoever.