OSNews

For instance, if you create a different user to own your backups, then a user-level malware can't nuke them.

The problem isn't so much the malware that just deletes files, the problem is the malware that reads them! It's quite common for people to keep important job-related files on their computers, or they write down their passwords in some text file and so on, and as such those personal files are very lucrative for malware writers to read over.

It's only script-kiddies who want to destroy files, the real threat are those people who write malware that hides itself from the user and doesn't do anything that would attract attention.

Good point, but then again, you can have a dedicated user for your important documents, a user who never visits suspicious websites. Cumbersome but effective, except if the malware has root access. I do agree that, in practice, a user-level malware is almost as bad, because people don't take full advantage of user-based security because it's such a chore and such a resource hog for graphical environments.