Viral Infection Hit 33% of EU Online Users in 2010

According to Eurostat the Office of Statistics of EU (European Union), which recently released a report, about 33% of EU's online users had virus on their computers in 2010 that caused time or data loss.

The figure, notably, follows from a survey carried out in April-June 2010 over persons from the different member states that number 27 in all. The date on which the study paper found release was February 8, 2011 designated as Safer Internet Day when mechanisms were to be promoted for safe Internet use particularly among children.

In the paper, the country detected to have the maximum level of infection was Bulgaria where 58% of respondents reported of malware on their PCs. Other countries following Bulgaria were Malta (50%), Slovakia (47%), Hungary (46%) and Italy (45%).

Moreover, the member states, which informed having the least contamination percentages from PC Trojans, viruses, or worms included Austria (14%), Ireland (15%), Finland (20%) and Germany (22%).

Further, a mean of 3% respondents reported experiencing financial loss because of pharming or phishing assaults alternatively deceptive credit/debit card use, with UK as one country most attacked where 7% people became victimized.

Additionally, in spite of most people in the European Union utilizing security software, people in Estonia, Romania and Latvia were discovered as being less skilled. Also, merely 65% Estonians, 64% Romanians and 62% Latvians deployed security software for safeguarding themselves from malware.

Meanwhile, 4% of EU inhabitants stated that they suffered from more severe issues about personal information exploitation and Internet privacy violations, with Spain and Bulgaria as worst hit both at a 7% rate. The Netherlands and Italy followed close with a 6% rate each.

Notably, the above statistics arrive only days after William Hague Foreign Secretary of Britain disclosed that cyber-attacks were a threat to even government PCs. V3.co.uk published this on February 7, 2011.

The Secretary, during the 1st week of February 2011, at a security conference in Munich, told attendees that many e-mail users received a message, which posing as being from the White House, directed them for following a web-link, which actually pulled down the Trojan Zeus.

Related article: Viral Scam Bothers Facebook Users by Exploiting the Site’s Photoshop App

» SPAMfighter News - 2/14/2011