Rich Countries Suffer Less Malware, Says Microsoft Study 84
chicksdaddy writes "To paraphrase a quote attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald: 'Rich countries aren't like everyone else. They have less malware.' That's the conclusion of a special Security Intelligence Report from Microsoft, anyway. The special supplement, released on Wednesday, investigated the links between rates of computer infections and a range of national characteristics including the relative wealth of a nation, observance of the rule of law and the rate of software piracy. The conclusion: cyber security (by Microsoft's definition: low rates of malware infection) correlated positively with many characteristics of wealthy nations – high Gross Income Per Capita, higher broadband penetration and investment in R&D and high rates of literacy. It correlated negatively with characteristics common in poorer nations – like demographic instability, political instability and lower levels of education.'"
Anti-virus software not updated (Score:4, Informative)
The reason is because anti-virus software on these computers is not updated. Reasons for not updating primarily revolve around how expensive it is to connect to the Internet. I don't live in my home country, Zimbabwe. When I did visit the one time I installed Ubuntu on the home PC because half the time the PC was unusable thanks to malware. I blogged about it here http://www.mahalasoft.co.za/blog/ubuntu-linux-experiment [mahalasoft.co.za] . The next time I visited, Windows XP had be reinstalled on the machine because that is what most of the "technies" knew back home, yes the PC was unusable again.
Re:You don't say? (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe not for the first few times, but after a while it just gets freaking old. That's when an hourly rate starts to sound appealing to me. Even family members need to learn and stop making the same stupid mistakes over and over.