I'd honestly like to know how you can "safely copy files" with Explorer.

You know a lot of viruses, you don't know all the viruses. How can you discount the possibility that, one day, the USB interface itself will be subverted to spread viruses ?

> the USB interface itself will be subverted to spread viruses ?

It can. But then I would know about it as soon the AV companies know. And I can take the precaution accordingly. If that is a zero day [remote] exploit, then I am toast, with or without anti virus.

The point is: anti-viruses would probably make me 10% more secure over what I already am. Therefore it's not worth it when one considers its cons.

If you really can enjoy the same level of semi-instantaneous knowledge of "virusdom" as AV companies, then you're the 0.00001% of the population. Your solution simply doesn't scale in the real world.

In fact this was one of the propagation methods of Stuxnet. It exploited a vulnerability in MS's .lnk file to achieve code execution when removable USB storage was inserted. See p. 29 of http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/secur...

I have a command file on my desktop, double clicking on which deletes all .pif .lnk .inf .com and -shr attributed files in USB drive [plus other things].

Yeah, so if you had an USB stick with one of those WMF exploits before the patch was out you'd be toast.

I turn off all media preview on my Windows machine.