Viruses, Spyware, Phishing Cost U.s. Consumers $7 Billion Over Two Years

It's not surprising though, if some of you remember my research paper, I did mention that computer hacking and viruses cost companies over sixty billion dollars. So to keep in check these two years is from 2005-2007, and that over seven billion has be lost because of the fastest growing computer crimes in today's world. The survey that was taken they asked 2000 people and list the following percentages of these crimes:

38% (760) reported computer viruses
34% (680) reported spyware
8% (1600) reported Phishing attacks at $200 a attack

Some other stats they mention is that children who signed up on myspace younger then 14 was 13% and under 10 3%. Not surprisingly enough, although very debatable, is that paid security software was a lot better then free software. The reason I say that is some paid security software plain out sucks Norton, Spysweeper; McAfee though I have had no problems with them and enjoy the package they have given me on this laptop, so I be sticking with them for bit longer.

Now what gets me really and of course you can blame ignorance is that 33% or 600 people, do not use any security software and on top of that, Consumer Reports estimates that 3.7 million U.S. broadband households are not using a firewall. Now I know darn well Windows XP has it built in along with most anti-virus programs, so either they don't use it at or they don't know its there. People wonder why they have so many computer problems, but what can you do most people spend the money to buy a computer, but they won't spend the money on proper protection. Of course you have members like matak who don't use it all and so how pull off that miracle of not getting attack, but what can you do though, protection is not coming in fast enough to beat out the hackers, viruses, spyware, spam.

SOURCE

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