Reuters: 80% of Chinese Computers Virus Infected

Alien54 writes "A rueters news report says that 80% of computers in China have been touched by a computer virus. They quote a a six-week survey conducted by the [Chinese] National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center cited in the official China Daily newspaper."

Comments

goldmine for software publishers

[Diver777]

Can someone say goldmine for anti-virus makers, at least ones that can produce a chinese version of their product... but oh yeah, with the insanely high % of piracy as well, it doesn't look like anyone would buy the product legit!

Incorrect

[drhairston]

I must point out a factual inaccuracy in the article summary. It is not stated that 80% of Chinese computers have at one point experienced a virus infection. In fact, it is stated that over 80% of a sample group of Chinese computer users believed they had been infected with a virus. This perception is a much muddier number, considering I know many of my colleagues believe that advertising pop-up ads for casinos are actually computer viruses.

Here is the source for my observation:

"Only 16 percent of computer users we sampled this year reported they were free from any virus attack, while last year nearly one in three users said they suffered no computer infections," the newspaper quoted the center's chief engineer, Zhang Jian, as saying.

Re:Incorrect

[garcia]

I must point out that most people have NO idea when they are infected with a virus, especially email borne ones.

These people think that mail sent by the viruses that are being returned to them are actually others accessing their computer and emailing from it. They have no idea that they have contracted a virus at all.

"I have a virus scanner!"

Re:Incorrect

[phsolide]

over 80% of a sample group of Chinese computer users believed they had been infected with a virus

I'll believe in this belief. Years ago, maybe 1989 or 1990, I had a conversation with an engineer at then-major aerospace company Martin Marietta. He was no dummy, but he carried the misbelief that a computer virus was something that occurred naturally, like an influenza virus, or herpes.

In conjunction with the "if anything's wrong with my computer, it's a virus" phenomena you see every day amongst business types, an 80% belief rate isn't unlikely, even in the USA.

I blame the Anti-Virus industry at least partially for this. Members of the AV community are so tight-lipped about viruses that they end up being almost mystical. AV people seem to believe that any real information about a virus or worm will foster further virus and/or worm writing. So they don't give out any real information (like "Using Outlook will inevitably cause you to get infected. Switch to something else"). They even seem to have helped the trend of calling any malware a "virus" because of this.

Re:Incorrect

[giminy]

I blame the Anti-Virus industry at least partially for this. Members of the AV community are so tight-lipped about viruses that they end up being almost mystical. AV people seem to believe that any real information about a virus or worm will foster further virus and/or worm writing. So they don't give out any real information (like "Using Outlook will inevitably cause you to get infected. Switch to something else"). They even seem to have helped the trend of calling any malware a "virus" because of this.

Maybe they just want to keep themselves in business. If everybody fled from Outlook, there would not be as strong a need for virus checking software, now would there? :).

Misleading headline

[User 956]

80% of computers in China have been touched by a computer virus

Typical Slashdot journalism. "touched by a virus" is far different than "infected by a virus". My computer gets touched by viruses all the time, but it never actually gets infected, because I keep my apache (the only service running) up-to-date.

Easily believeable

[MxTxL]

I used to live in Beijing... as an american there you would be astonished at the rate of piracy. We're used to maybe picking up a copy of photoshop from a buddy, or you know someone who will burn you a copy of windows.... there they sell about any commercial software product (not too long after release) on pressed CDs (with case and jacket) for about a buck in just about any open marketplace. Needless to say, there are not too many people with 'real' versions of the software running around.

The problem with these CDs is that they have been cracked (so people can use them) by who-knows-who and frequently have other 'things' floating around on the CDs and i'm sure there huge numbers of virii that are being distributed in this way. It's really easy to picture an 80% infection rate. It's kinda like a high school computer lab where all the kids trade floppy disks and there is no anti-virus protection.... everyone has it before long.

Survey methodology?

[Rev.LoveJoy]

There is no detail about how this 'survey' was carried out.

Try this, ask 10 computer users (users, not geeks) these two questions:

1). Have you ever had a strange computer problem?

2). Think it could have been a virus?

I would lay money that you can find an 80% 'touched by a virus' rating on any group of people you like.

Anyone familar with the social sciences and / or statistics realizes that corrolation does not equal causation. However, if you're a gov't agencey (as one reader posted previously) in need of funding, corollation = causation is a very useful tool. Even more so when you engineer the corollation part.

This article is a waste of time.

Cheers,
-- RLJ