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Article first published 11-12-2010
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Everyone has heard of AVG. They are one of the leading anti-virus companies supplying free, and paid-for anti-virus software suites for PCs.
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During the last week in July 2010, they collected data from more than a 100 million personal PCs world-wide and from the data, they produced their AVG Global Threat Index (AVG GTI).
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Basically, any PCs that were using AVG's anti-virus software suite automatically reported back to AVG if they faced a security threat of any sort. AVG collected and analysed the data and produced their AVG GTi - a list of places in the world where you are most likely to be attacked by some form of malicious software.
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Our readers may find the results quite worrying because according to AVG's GTI, the most dangerous place in the world to own and be operating a PC is Turkey!
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Nearly all internet traffic from here has to travel through the Middle East, and the majority of our public IP addresses are from that area meaning that, we are in the region of the world facing the greatest risk. Apparently, in this region, during the week that the data
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was collected, one in ten PCs was attacked !
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If that little snippet of news is not enough to grab your attention, what about this?
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In 2010, Symantec, another leading security company in this field, identified and blocked 340,000 different pieces of malicious malware in emails. This is over a hundred times more than they found in 2009. They also found, 43,000 web sites containing some form of malicious software/code and estimated that in 2010, 95 billion Phishing emails were in circulation!
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Don't forget too, that Google, and many other leading search engine's results, are riddled with links to web sites containing various scams designed to take your money, but
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Google has promised to do better by taking down results that lead to malicious destinations within 24 hours of them being reported.
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Users of Firefox web browser are also suffering if their PCs become infected with a piece of malware that allows their credit card and banking web site login details to be stolen and with the release of "Firesheep," a malicious piece of software that allows an attacker to hijack accounts over a wireless internet connection, users of Facebook, Twitter and various other social media web sites, are also facing a threat.
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With the various threats facing PC users/internet surfers, especially in this region, it's time for everyone to be taking their PC security seriously. Security isn't something that we should think about last, it should be our primary concern.
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In the old days, a criminal's most important tools were his torch, balaclava and a jemmy. Nowadays, your more likely to see him carrying a laptop computer, mobile telephone and USB stick, and with more criminals choosing to commit e-crime, it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with everything that is going on!
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