The subject disclosure is directed towards protecting against malware, by classifying a user's risk level, which corresponds to a likelihood of malware being activated. To make the classification, data is collected that represents a probability of encountering malware, a probability of a user activating that malware, and the impact to the machine is activated. The classification maps to a protection level, which may be dynamically adjustable, e.g., based upon current risk conditions. The protection level determines a way to mitigate possible damage, such as by running a program as a virtualized program, running a virtualized operating system, or sandboxing a process.