MessageLabs - India Topped the Countries with High Virus Frequency

According to a study conducted by MessageLabs, a Web security services provider, the virus activities have increased to an enormous amount across the world, including India. India has climbed to the number one position with one in every 30.5 e-mails, reported The Economic Times on February 17, 2008.

MessageLabs added that other than virus attacks, spam attacks are also disrupting e-mail traffic. The study conducted in January this year found that global ratio of the spam e-mails was 73.4%, which signified one in every 1.36 e-mails were affected.

In its study, MessageLabs stated that it's interesting to note that western countries are less affected with spam e-mails as compared to India. The study also showed that in New Zealand the effect of virus is found in one out of every 768 e-mails, which is quite good. In Australia, it was one in every 298.7 e-mails, whereas in the US, one in 191.5 e-mails contained virus and in Canada, the impact of virus was in one in every 158.4 e-mails.

As far as other Asian countries are concerned, Japan recorded the availability of virus in one in every 273.7 e-mails. The scenario in China was also much better as compared to India as one in every 92.7 e-mail was affected with virus.

Apart from that, the study also stated that all industrial sectors are prone to virus attacks. Ironically, the study finds that finance sector was at least risk to virus attacks as compared to other industrial sectors, where one in every 177.9 e-mails are said to be affected with virus. For the IT service sector, the susceptibility to virus was one in every 143 e-mails and in retail sector, one in 125.6 e-mails.

The study computed that the global ratio of viruses borne via e-mail traffic found to be one in every 131.4 e-mails. The global ratio of spam e-mails in January 2008 was reported as 73.4%, which comes out to be one in every 1.36 e-mails. The figure recorded an increase of 0.3% from December 2007.

MessageLabs said that Israel is on top of the list with 87.3% spam e-mails are targeted to it. The security firm scans nearly 2.5 billion e-mails along with 1.5 Billion Web connections for spam and viruses.

Related article: Mozilla Rules Out Bug in Its Firefox

» SPAMfighter News - 2/26/2008