NEW DELHI: India, where internet penetration is increasing fast, is also the most vulnerable to spammers and virus attacks, a study has said.

"Virus activity increased across a number of countries in January, including India, which takes the number one spot with 1 in 30.5 emails," a study conducted by a web security services firm MessageLabs said.

Apart from virus attacks, spams are now proving to be the most disruptive element in the e-mail traffic. The study conducted in January this year found the global ratio of spam mail was 73.4 per cent, which means one in every 1.36 email was affected.

Interestingly, virus attack on the western countries are far less than on India, the leading provider of integrated messaging and web security services said in the study.

In New Zealand, web security levels were pretty good as one out of 768 mails had Virus, while for Australia, it was one for every 298.7 mails. In the US, one in every 191.5 email had a virus while the same in Canada was found in every 158.4 e-mails.

Among other Asian countries, Japan was at the lower end of the table, where one in every 273.7 mails had virus in them. However, China was better placed than India as one virus attack was reported for every 92.7 mails there.

Virus levels for nearly all industry sectors increased in January. In the finance sector, virus level was low in comparison with other segments where one in every 177.9 mails was affected while for the IT services sector, the figure was 143 and in retail 1 in every 125.6 emails received had a virus.

The global ratio of email-borne viruses in e-mail traffic was one in 131.4 emails.