75% of Phishing Emails Are Guessing Right

Ladies and gentlemen, let us advise you to switch from antivirus software to being safe online at all times. Yeah, that’s right – you don’t.

A recent study into the use of antivirus software found that it only protects against 17 of the 32 malware types analysed. The rest are either unrecoverable or thought to be too much trouble to bother with.

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For example, the amount of focus on the dangers of ‘patches’ and ‘fixes’ as the law of the internet “cleansse” unauthorised (but benign) content from your screen misses the fact that digital criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their methods of attack.

“We got involved after reports of a suspicious change to our code being pushed out, one that is vital to the continued functionality of the site. We understood this could possibly be part of an unsolicited hacker attempt and no longer wanted to be identified as being vulnerable,” Chris Bird, who develops virtualisation software, said.

© Getty Images Sergej Boškovec

“It was found that the change was the result of attacks against other websites, and was potentially malicious to the site and indeed its users. The campaign had targeted vulnerable users (such as ourselves) by sending them specific links to sites that could have been working to advertise for phishing scams or other suspicious activities.

“The response and scope of the campaign may have been genuine, but this didn’t stop attacks against other sites that could have innocently served ads to users of ours or those of other well-known brands.”

Sadly, it’s estimated that the UK has around 70 million vulnerable users. Over half of the households on the UK are on different networks – a fact that may come as no surprise to anyone who’s tried to adjust their provider (shudder) since 4G has come in.

To give you a brief overview of the research by Kaspersky Lab, these are the main findings:

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– The first 10% of malware strains are seldom seen by antivirus software

– 90% of all malware infections target users who download content on compromised accounts

– Over 99% of users believe that antivirus software would help them

– 76% think that antivirus software may be damaging to the internet and trust

– 95% think that antivirus software pays for itself

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