Despite the amount of security software being made available, it turns out that an estimated ninety eight per cent of all home computers are vulnerable at some level to hackers and other unwanted intrusions.

This comes from the Danish security firm, Secunia, who have been taking data from their Personal Software Inspector (PSI), which found that only two per cent had fully patched software.

The figures were worked out as follows:

Number of insecure programs per PC/user (Dec 2008):


  1. 0 Insecure Programs: 1.91% of PCs
    1-5 Insecure Programs: 30.27% of PCs
    6-10 Insecure Programs: 25.07% of PCs
    11+ Insecure Programs: 45.76% of PCs

Number of insecure programs per PC/user (Jan 2008):


  1. 0 Insecure Applications: 4.54% of computers
    0-5 Insecure Applications: 27.83% of computers
    6-10 Insecure Applications: 25.69% of computers
    11+ Insecure Applications: 41.94% of computers

In the majority of cases the computers were running out of date software, and nearly half had around eleven unpatched programmed which can be very risky when surfing the internet.