Brits best French in Euro securo pwn party

Brits are less likely than the French to be p0wned by malware, phishing, or to have their privacy violated by some wretched online service, but are far more vulnerable than the Dutch, the European Union's numbers office has found.

The Eurostat statistics haul was acquired by in surveys last year of EU citizens aged 16 to 74 years old who had used the internet some time in 2014.

The office considers a security incident a malware infection, privacy violation, or successful phish resulting in financial loss.

A report (PDF) released on the oxymoron that is Safer Internet Day found internet-dwellers in the United Kingdom were about a third less likely to be compromised than the French, but more than twice as likely as the Dutch.

Twenty-seven of the 28 member states – excluding Romania – were counted in the fail list.

The Czech Republic appears to be the least-targeted of the nations, with just 10 per cent of users reporting attacks.

It is entirely possible that many more Czechs have been hosed without their knowledge by competent and quiet VXers.

@EU_Eurostat @StatisticsGR it would be far less if people would just stop clicking on dodgy banners on websites. Learn from the Dutch.

— Nick Litsardopoulos (@Nlitsardopoulos) February 8, 2016

All nations except for Macedonia, which was utterly hosed, with 71 per cent reporting infection (the report does not offer country-by-country respondent counts), reported a fall in virus and Trojan installs since the 2010 edition of the EU survey.

Slovaks experience the largest drop of 38 per cent in total user virus infection, while Brits experience a 14 per cent fall from almost a third in 2010 to 17 per cent last year.

The number of infected French boxes fell by only five per cent to 29 percent.

That rate may give reason to why nearly a third of French net users reported avoiding online purchases compared to 11 per cent of Brits, making the former one of most weary net shopping nations and the latter one of the more confident - or blasé. ®