An online malware measuring tool, Panda Software"s Nanoscan tool, put the U.K. in the bottom spot last week, with only 8.1% of those scanned showing active malware. By a separate measure, that of "latent" or inactive malware, however, the U.K. fared less well, reaching 20.7%. Top of the infection list for active malware was France (28.2%), Mexico (23.1%), Brazil (18%), the U.S. (17.8%), and Argentina (17.4%).
The figures appear to show very high levels of infection, but the results only rate those who visited the site and asked to be scanned, meaning these individuals would be expected to show a bias towards having infected PCs. The company has created its own global malware map from the data, which is collected from thousands of mostly consumer PCs every 15 minutes. Almost 8% of those scanned and who showed active threats also had anti-virus software installed.