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Rich Countries Suffer Less Malware, Says Microsoft Study

Posted by timothy on from the better-treatment-helps dept.

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.'"

7 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. You don't say? by Maximalist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Better literacy leads to a better ability to spot the poorly written bogus come-ons that get you infected when you click on them? I just can't believe it.

    1. Re:You don't say? by TWX · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Better literacy leads to a better ability to spot the poorly written bogus come-ons that get you infected when you click on them? I just can't believe it.

      Not from what I've seen...

      Having a techie friend call to fix it when it's broke is what gets most people out of the jam.

      Though with my friends, I charge $60/hr to friends to fix their computers on the side. As a consequence I do maybe two side jobs a year. I don't want to do side work, and when they know that it'll cost probably $120 to get their $500 computer fixed, they do tend to be at least a little more careful.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    2. Re:You don't say? by Erikderzweite · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Mine have been forcefully switched to Linux. Much easier to support since I've set up ssh reverse tunnel with port forwarding for vnc. So if a PC is online, I can fix it. If not -- there's a custom LiveCD which does the same trick with reverse ssh.

      Oh, and no problems with malware whatsoever.

    3. Re:You don't say? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A few years ago I set up my parents with Ubuntu LTS, since they wanted something that worked and I didn't want to update it every 6 months. Everything was working fine, until my sister's dickhead boyfriend "upgraded" it to the latest version and messed everything up. From then on, when my parents had trouble I referred them back to dickhead boyfriend, since he evidently volunteered to maintain their OS from then on. Once it involved responsibility he wouldn't do shit, and I wasn't inclined to clean up his mess, so my parents blamed linux and bought a mac.

      The moral of the story: don't give your parents the root password, even if you think they should be able to install programs on their own computer. They'll just tell the password to someone who feels like a hacker for one afternoon, but doesn't actually want to accept the responsibility of maintaining something. It's like giving car keys to a teenager, he crashes it, and they blame the car for not being crashproof.

  2. *hand on their head* - *pat* *pat* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Now that's a mighty find report.

    Care to compare that rate VS Open Source ?

    Because my memory says Microsoft cuts off machines that are pirated so if you are unwilling to spend a month of ones cashflow for software just so you can get patches OR one can choose to eat, pay rent or property taxes, or electricity.

    This problem lies at the foot of Microsoft and their usary. Unless they can show that it doesn't by comparing Open Source boxes based on things like FreeBSD or any of the various GNU/Linux forkes suffer the same problem, the only logical choice is this report is a failed astroturffing attempt to blame others VS Microsoft policies.

  3. Can Microsoft detect malware? by QuietLagoon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But how can anything that Microsoft says about malware be trusted when Microsoft's own Security Essentials software has problems detecting malware?

  4. Countries are rich for a reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Countries didn't become rich by accident.

    It's a combination of several things, starting with higher IQs and then including things like rule of law, hygiene, political stability and emphasis on learning.

    In any part of the world, and in every ethnic group, you will find that some countries have broken away from the others and have generally higher intelligence, thus put a priority on things like stability, rule of law, infrastructure, etc.

    It's not an accident they're richer.

    In life, all things come down to the choices we make and the abilities we have. It's not arbitrary, no matter how much ./ peanut gallery would like to think it so.