the safest and most dangerous places in the world?

Where are the safest and most dangerous places in the world to use the internet?

During the last week of July, AVG researchers compiled a list of virus and malware attacks by country picked up by AVG security software.

This means we have compiled data from over 127 million computers in 144 countries to determine the incidence rates of virus attacks by country.

Make no mistake analyzing virus data by country doesn’t tell us in which region users are completely safe on the internet. This is because viruses and malware knows no boundaries and doesn’t  stop at borders for Visa authorization, but it is a useful snapshot into user behaviour. 

Internet users in Turkey, Russia, the Caucasus and South-east Asia for example show disproportionately higher rates of being attacked than the global average of 1 in 73.

There are a number of reasons for this. Some of it may be down to a tendency to access semi-legal or illegal download sites, while some of it probably is down to being less cautious when it comes to sharing links and files online. Another factor is the popularity of Internet cafes and people generally sharing computers, but even in these countries, a minority of users account for a large proportion of attacks.

On the other end of the scale is Japan - a country where both Internet use and broadband protection is very high - but where our software only picked up a web attack for every 403rd user. Our take on this is that Japanese web surfers are generally more aware of safe and risky surfing behaviours.

It is worth noting that we have only taken a snapshot of the data during the last week of July and our table of safe and risky places to use the internet will change over time. Web threats, malware and viruses are designed to target different users across the world and this results in its own geographic footprint depending on concentrations of users across the globe.

However, our research should also serve as a warning to all travelling abroad and using the internet. If you are travelling without your computer and use a public machine or borrow a friend or colleagues, ensure that when accessing web -based services like email, that you log out and close the browser when you have finished your session and that you don’t agree to store any passwords or log-in information on that machine.