by Hugh Stephens — 23 July 2025
You won’t get a message like this announcing you’ve just downloaded malware. Instead, you will find out when unauthorized payments start showing up on your credit card statement, or worse, you find that your bank account has been drained or you’ve received a ransomware threat, suddenly locked out of your accounts. No one knowingly downloads malware, but it is a proven byproduct of content piracy. Although a global threat, malware penetration is particularly problematic for emerging economies, like those in Southeast Asia working to build viable local content industries and creating safe digital platforms to grow their economy. A recently released study (“Consumer Risk from Piracy in Southeast Asia”) authored by Macquarie University professor Dr. Paul Watters, concludes that the risk of downloading malware in the form of trojans, worms or keyloggers, ransomware and cryptojacking, phishing and credential theft, spyware, data exfiltration and network compromise is up to sixty-five times higher when using piracy versus legitimate sites.
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