"Hampered by pirated software and super-slow download times, computer users in Africa are finding PC viruses hard to eradicate.
Alan Mercer was at his desk in the regional capacity building bureau in Assosa, western Ethiopia, when a man burst into his office, distraught. Right at the end of a four-year master's degree programme, he had lost the only copy of his thesis to a computer virus. Mercer, an IT trainer with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), wasn't surprised. "Show me an Ethiopian computer without a virus and I'd ask which foreigner it belongs to," he says. While western countries have partially learned to neutralise the threat of computer viruses, Africa has become a hive of trojans, worms and exploiters of all stripes. As PC use on the continent has spread in the past decade (in Ethiopia it has gone from 0.01% of the Ethiopian population to 0.45% through 1999-2008), viruses have hitched a ride, wreaking havoc on development efforts, government programmes and fledgling businesses." --clip-- And more sad facts follow: ""PCs that were bought with limited funds or donated sit collecting dust in the corner of the room because they have been devastated by viruses," says André Mohamed, an IT professional in Ethiopia. "It's a major reduction in productivity and efficiency."" More at http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/12/ethiopia-computer-virus Juha-Matti _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
