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UK Leads European Union In Spyware Crime

Spyware on the Internet has made rapid pace leaving behind viruses in the race. Spyware has many categories. The most basic one consists of programs that intercept online and offline activities that are sent to third parties - the spammers without the user's approval. The other type includes system-monitoring devices that record chat sessions, and activities during a site visit. Spyware includes keylogger programs, which when installed can enable seizing keystroke information such as usernames and passwords employed for online banking.

UK business has set a high priority on dealing with spyware. During the last two quarters, UK and Ireland have been the most attacked countries in Europe. Both these countries are strong in IT companies and the resulting wealth obviously makes them a target.

Research shows that UK predominantly faces grater malware attack than probably any of the countries in EU. A survey conducted internationally by anti-spyware firm - Webroot, reveals that over 19,480 PCs have been infected in UK in the last few months. UK thus lies at the top of the list replacing Ireland. Incidence of spyware in UK is about 30.5 for every 1,000 PCs leaving behind Ireland with 30.3, Lithuania with 29.3 and Latvia with 26.5.

Webroots's chief executive C. David Moll said that the data selected over the past six months unfailingly indicate that spyware still exists. According to him spyware is money motivated attack and as long as it yields considerable bucks, cyber criminals will leave no stone unturned to grab it.

The company estimates that spyware is burdening UK with a cost of about 445 m pounds in terms of time, productivity and computer repairs. Spyware attacks are more dangerous because they cannot be remedied by traditional anti-virus software because each attack is customized making it impossible to protect data files.

The UK including Ireland, being English-speaking countries will always feature as targets of spyware. This is so because spyware authors are located mostly in the United States, an English language-speaking nation.

Spyware vendors are exploiting the popular social networking sites to victimize new people while spammers are making additional profits by attaching spyware applications to their e-mail scams. Spyware criminals are also overwhelming the Internet with malicious websites in the hope of capturing more victims.

Related article: US Passes Baton to Asia in Spam Relay

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