Your computers are not safe anymore. With increasing incidents of spamming, and hijackers taking over computers and turning them into zombie machines, cyber safety is at a critical juncture.

McAfee, the computer safety company has recently released information regarding these two problems. Since the beginning of the year, as many as 12 million computers have been hijacked worldwide, increasing the number of infected computers by 50%.

Deloitte, which is a well-known consulting and accounting firm, published this data in one of its reports explaining the economic problems poor cyber safety can bring, and urging for more effective measures to bring the situation under control. Greg Pellegrino from Deloitte said that since the problem is growing fast and it can endanger public safety, the action has to be quick.

According to data from McAfee, the US is the biggest victim of hijacking of computers with 18 percent computers in the country being infected. China fares slightly better with 13% zombie computers being reported. The UK did even better, with a 6% infection rate. Data shows that the safest place for computers is Italy where only 2-3% of the computers have been hijacked. If moving to Italy seems too drastic a solution, then for a simpler means of staying safe on the internet, take a look at broadbandgenie for broadband internet advice.

The US is also responsible for the majority of spamming in the world, with 35% of worldwide spam activity during the first three months of the current year originating in the country. The UK seems safer in this regard and is not included in McAfee’s top-ten list of countries producing spam.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 11:16 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.