While you're far LESS susceptible to malware on a Mac or Linux, you're not invincible, and as you know, traceroute is a series of pings that carry with it your IP address. Under normal conditions it's not that big a deal, however, there are cases where a ping can result in a disproportionate defensive response.

I also remind you that it is possible to crack into a Mac and gain "root" access - as the annual hack-a-mac contest has proven.

Even with all of that, I still would not do anything online pertaining to financial services from any computer running IE6, or for that matter any variation of IE (7 or 8). I prefer to run firefox and safari, but Chrome on a PC is darn good too.

But again, like so many things, the biggest risk is the user. Always was, always will be. "Screensavers" and all that - it's all bad, and people need to at least take a little responsibility to properly use a computer.