Journalists (original article reported by Diane Bartz, Reuters) aren't doing their jobs.
Some are good in areas like politics, the economy, and other stuff, but technology seems to be an area where all outside journalists do a poor job.
Why do I say this?
Just to summarize, a new report from Symantec has shown an increase cybercrime through use of disguised malware (as antimalware programs).
Not once does this report mention that this likely only affects Windows users.
Granted, Linux and BSD users are practically invisible to other computer users, but Mac users are pretty visible (especially through recent ad campaigns from Apple).
Why can't they add this little clarification?
That's because it ties into the next question: isn't anyone suspicious that the report on cybercrime is sponsored by Symantec, a company that deals almost exclusively with antimalware programs for charge?
I think that Symantec is using this as a platform to sell their products; "cybercrime is on the rise, so you should buy Norton security programs from Symantec!"
If they mentioned that Mac and Linux/BSD users are virtually immune to these attacks, people would take a second look at these OSs that don't require extra software just to keep the system secure to usable levels. Guess what that means? Symantec would basically go out of business.
This is far from the first instance of bad journalism in failing to mention that small but still significant portions of the computer-using population are immune to these attacks. That said, it's one of the worse (but not the worst) article of its kind that I've seen; in fact, there is not one mention of even the word "Windows" (in reference to the OS(s) at risk).
Come on, journalists. Can't you actually do some proper investigation again?