Online virus attack rate:Bangladesh ranked 5th ‘most dangerous’ country

Mashiur Rahaman: Bangladesh has been ranked as the 5th ‘most dangerous’ country for internet usage with an average online virus attack rate — one in every 41 users, survey compiled by renowned antivirus software vendor AVG revealed.

Bangladesh – along with Vietnam and Laos is on the 5th position for most unsafe internet usage, the survey quoted marking Turkey the most dangerous and west-African state Namibia the safest country for internet use.

The AVG data – based on the statistics tracked from over 100 million PCs from the last week of July – shows that global web users face one in 73 chances, on average, of being attacked online on any given day. Researchers compiled data in 144 different countries and ranked the ‘safest’ and the ‘most dangerous’ destinations for going online.

Among the most dangerous states for internet usage, one out of every 10 internet users in Turkey gets infected online, followed by Russia (with one in 15 risk), Armenia (with one in 24 risk) and Azerbaijan (with one in 39 risk).

US and Pakistan tied with a one in 48 risk of online users getting attacked, the data revealed while the UK, Australia and Germany — all fared a little better with a respective 1:63, 1:75, and 1:83 risk on online attack.

Furthermore, as per the AVG statistics, the five ‘safest’ countries are —- Namibia, Togo, Japan, Niger and Sierra Leone.

Noting that the Web attacks were detected and stopped by AVG, the firm’s chief research officer Roger Thompson said in a blog post: “Even the global average of facing a one in 73 attack on any given day does not present great odds if averaged out across a year.”

With more than 110 million active users around the world, AVG has become the world’s fourth largest vendor of antivirus software measured by installed user base.