India highest scorer in viruses

Earlier we were in hit list of spam and now virus! Well, this is just one of the downsides of internet penetration in India I guess. Few months back I had read it somewhere that as per Govt of India report, 76% of mails originating from India are spam!!! And now there is a report stating one in ever 30 emails in India contains virus! "Virus activity increased across a number of countries in January, including India, which takes the number one spot with 1 in 30.5 emails," a study conducted by a web security services firm MessageLabs said. India has been identified as the most vulnerable destination for virus as well as spam. The ratio of virus attack in western countries is far lesser in western countries. Infact in New Zealand its 1:768, in Australia its 1:298.7 & in US its 1:191.5.

Phew, so where are we as far as internet security is concerned? On an average I get somewhere between 12-20 spam mails on each of my account – yahoo, gmail etc. Despite my all trials of deleting / unsubscribing from all those junk mailers, there is not much refuge from the same. And every fourth email which I get is having an attachment with .pif / …. kind of unknown extensions which surely contains virus. Not to forget those viagra & other such werid product promo mails and yeah our very own O3 spam comments which sometimes are in such huge numbers that the mere thought of deleting soooo many comments makes one scared. Well, regardless of best possible anti-virus software & spam filters, those junk emails keep flooding my mail boxes everyday. Infact yesterday only I was trying to delete my spam messages from my yahoo id which has got the worst spam filter I guess and after deleting a few I just felt sick & tired of doing the same thing again and again! Well, no wonder if we accounted for 76% spam origin & 1:30.5 virus attacks as the repercussion of the same can be observed in my own inboxes as well J. I’m wondering - is it the phenomenal growth in internet penetration in India or is our poor security systems that we are such a susceptible target for spammers & virus attackers?