Computer users in Samoa are being warned their country now has one of the riskiest web domains in the world.
Anti virus software developers have analysed millions of generic and country domains as part of their third annual Mapping the Mal Web report.
McAfee's Director of web security research, Paula Greve, says Samoa's domain, dot ws, ranks third after Cameroon and China.
"What we're seeing with Samoa was a huge increase in the risky activities especially with regard to phishing and malicious download activity."
Samoa has had a four-fold increase in risk over the last year with nearly 18 percent of its sites exposed to cyber crimes such as identity theft known as phishing.
Vanuatu and Japan are two of the five most secure countries with less than one percent of their sites causing problems.
