Nah internet exacerbated the issue
Back in the day, we used to check for boot sector viruses on floppies.
When Vista came out PM mode (poor man's sandbox) was one of the improvements.
Most people turned it off so they could see Britney Spears truly naked.
You can still go to pages now where they recommend you turn off your firewall to see all of her, and they do it. Now you could say don't make it an option, but then they do, for backwards compatibility reasons...
The real vector of attack is greed.
Free ring tones, MP3s, porn, tax rebates, Canadian lottery wins, dead businessmen in Hong Kong, liitle old bible thumper's bequests and of course Nigerian parcels of money.
The list of idiots is endless, and as they say a another one logs on every minute.
Mainly with windows...