EVERY DAY? Really? Over 800 each hour, every hour? 13 per minute? One every five seconds, 24/7?

Who the h*** is saying that?

"In fact, thanks to the cybersecurity industry's efforts, Conficker has already shrunken significantly since its peak in January, when it infected more than 10 million computers, by F-Secure's count. Given that it's currently only a fraction of that size and not yet doing any real harm, F-Secure research Patrik Runald argues that the media should be focusing on the other 20,000 new strains of malicious software that appear every day, most of which are more active than Conficker."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7797280.stm

"Malware includes computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, most rootkits, spyware, dishonest adware, crimeware and other malicious and unwanted software. In law, malware is sometimes known as a computer contaminant, for instance in the legal codes of several U. S. states, including California and West Virginia."

hey, this was clearly not approved by testudo first so it can't be valid.

just saying the number seems awfully high when you think about what "20,000 per day" means.

one should always scrutinize statistics when they are used in support of an argument, instead of mindlessly accepting them.

If it truly is as high as 20,000 a day, OK then. It just seems awfully big. Are they counting every little half-assed hack by some script kiddie?

that's why i looked it up. can't help with what they're counting.

don't like these too much.
They should run the bean counter one some more in light of MS's renewed efforts.
(yes, yes, criticizing someone else's ad campaign in your own big expensive one is a little hypocritical, I still like that one regardless)

definitely one of my favorites. I get many chuckles from that. Microsoft threw away a lot of money on Seinfeld and still didn't fix Vista. Now Vista isn't mentioned at all. Silence is golden.

It does not matter how many viruses, or how much malware is really released. 20,000 or just one new one per day. It does not matter if Conficker is doing damage or just sitting there dormant and doing nothing.

The 'perception' among most people is that viruses and spyware are a big problem on windows.

How big of a problem is really user centric (some people get infected with all sorts of c*** while others compute for years with none).

In the end though, it is the perception that matters. People perceive Windows to be a wasteland of bad S*** and it would take years of near zero problems before that attitude is going to change.

Apple's ads are spot on and they are being smart to exploit this.