In 2012, Vietnam Lost Almost $400 Million Due to Viruses?

via techtricksworld.com

According to ICTNews, BKAV, Vietnam’s leading anti-virus software company, has reported that Vietnamese people lost almost $400 million due to viruses.

It may just be BKAV tooting its horn again (as the startup community recently was in an uproar over BKAV CEO’s outlandish claims that more users used BKAV than Google and Facebook) but the company measured this figure by looking at the income levels of computer users and the cost value of their work being interrupted by computer viruses. Thus, users in the country has lost an average of VND 1.3 million ($60) per computer, extrapolated across 5.9 million computers across the country, this amounts to the $400 million figure.

BKAV also threw out a few other interesting figures including that 93 percent of users admit that they have had viruses on their USBs in the last 12 months. That’s an increase of 5 percent over last year. In May 2013 alone, 2,636 computer viruses have surfaced in Vietnam and have infected over four million computers across Vietnam.

But I find the entire report particularly dubious. Arguably coffee breaks impact Vietnamese work even more, but that’s far from measurable. Nevertheless, rampant viruses overriding Windows computers in Vietnam is not new. And if BKAV is reporting a 5 percent It’s been around since the internet and computers first started to rise in Vietnam and hasn’t abated since. A predicament that BKAV has been able to capitalize on, making it one of the more successful tech companies in Vietnam.

I’ve pinged BKAV for comment, and will follow up on this soon.