We've all heard that China has a bad reputation for being one of the global hotspots for malware distribution, but we should remember that the computer users there are victims as well. 

Our CEO, Jason King, is in China right now, and has some very interesting statistics coming out of the security industry there.

When compared to the rest of the world:

• 26% of virus infected PCs are located in China
• 81% of individual PC users currently have malware on their machines
• 80% of Chinese enterprises have been a victim of an external malware attack
• Surveys show rapid deterioration in the situation in China
• Over 65% of Chinese PCs users reported account theft and information hijack between 2003-2007
• There was an approximate 2100% increase in malware attacks toward servers 2003-2007

So, while there is a host of malware coming out of that market, they are certainly not immune to the effects.

Source:  www.antivirus-china.org.cn

It wasn't a contest so much as a challenge for beard growth.

Inspired by the national Swedish hockey team tradition of not shaving during the playoffs leading up to the world championships, some of our guys decided a couple of weeks before launch to let the hair grow - and here are the results. They also added a 'funky' hair day the day after launch, and then a fully clean shaven day on Friday.

Our CEO, Jason King, is currently at the exclusive Google Zeitgeist Europe '08 conference in London where "Europe's most forward-thinking innovators and visionaries congregate to share perspectives on trends shaping our world." As opportunity would have it, Jason also spoke briefly on behalf of the CSIA with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who arrived at the event this morning under a thick security blanket. If we can get ahold of that news clip, be sure that we'll be posting it here on the site.

For our Ad-Aware users who have experienced the current conflict with Windows Live OneCare, asking you to uninstall Ad-Aware, we've received confirmation from them that they will fix the conflict on their side in two stages (unfortunately because of their size they are slow to getting patches out to market).

• The false positive tagging of Ad-Aware as an 'at risk' application will be fixed with an update they intend to send out in April.

Almost daily now we come across a website that was obviously set up to take advantage of the unfortunate soul that lands on their page.

Here's an example of a page that is serving up a triple threat! Click on the image for a larger view.

First, they lure you in through the title "Lavasoft adware". Our product is Ad-Aware...not adware. That's the stuff we're fighting. There is also a screenshot of the Ad-Aware user interface. The text on the page is basic information that doesn't serve a purpose at all.