Microsoft stoppoed updating Windows XP. It's been pre-advertised, so everyone knew about it beforehand.
In my case, changing the operating system would mean buying a new computer, and it's outside my financial possibilities.
Am I under threat (and to what extent) if I'm very careful in my Internet browsing and I don't open emails/files coming from unknown sources? I've had Internet for possibly more than a decade, and I've never gotten a virus and I've never been hacked anywhere.
That you know of. We're not in the 90's any more, when a virus would usually announce its presence to brag. We're also not in the 2000's, where it'd immediately try to mail itself to everyone in your address book.
Of course, unless you're a nuclear weapons researcher, you're probably not going to be worth a zero-day, even for XP, so anti virus and a firewall will protect you from a large percentage of threats. Do you feel secure yet?
More things to consider:
a) XP was not designed with security in mind. What little security it has is bolted on patchwork. Any new attack technique will go right through.
b) You're probably going to use Java/Flash/a browser/etc. When they stop shipping security patches for the XP version, those programs are wide open
c) You might hope XP stops being a target as its market share drops, but as long as embedded XP is in use everywhere, it will remain a lucrative target.
Really, I wouldn't recommend running XP on anything connected to the network, except as a honeypot.
