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Because you didn't have an internet connection there was little they could to that would benefit them, not so much anymore.

(FWIW, in the 90's there were a few instances where commercially produced software managed to go out carrying viruses. :( )

Viruses propagated just fine through BBSes and stuff like AOL and CompuServe. Also: sharing disks.

Sure but companies didn't have a reason to intentionally send them to you-- nothing to gain when they can't steal your data, only erase it.

I vaguely remember a game that deleted data from your hardrive if you triggered the copy protection. The developer got quite a flak!