Press release July 29, 2002

91 Percent want to change their Internet Provider
Automatic security rated highly with internet users

After the automatic protection against viruses and unwanted dialers – SaferSurf – had been available since May 2002, Nutzwerk questioned visitors, testers and customers on its website. More than 1000 votes were evaluated. One question was what internet users were most afraid of in the internet. Another question checked if users were willing to change their provider if a provider offered automatic protection against viruses and unknowingly installed programs (including dialers) whenever the user accessed the internet.

46 percent of the respondents claimed to be most afraid of unwanted dialers. 26 percent felt most threatened by viruses. Only a small percentage of 12 percent sees a problem in the misuse of data. Most of the respondents (59 percent) already had problems with viruses and dialers.

The most surprising result was the answer to the following question: "Would you change your provider if another provider offers SaferSurf automatically?" 29 percent said they would change their provider immediately, 62 percent wanted to test SaferSurf first, but were willing to change. Only 9 percent wanted to do without an automatic protection against viruses and automatic dialers directly via the access provider.

"The survey showed a clear result: Though SaferSurf will still be offered provider-independent, we are going to enter into partnerships with access providers", says René Holzer, CEO of Nutzwerk and inventor of the real-time data filter SaferSurf.

In July 2002 Nutzwerk entered into a partnership with NTT/VERIO, the world's biggest business provider in the area of hosting. The Japanese-American company implements the automatic security features of SaferSurf into its offers. "We as the provider have to make sure that our clients can use the internet in a safe way. Otherwise the client goes to a provider where he gets automatic security", says Jan-Steffen Teske, Partner Account Manager of NTT/VERIO in Germany.

Even during the evaluation of the security tests at www.safersurf.com it became obvious that more than 70 percent of the internet users are not protected against viruses and Trojans. "Especially unsuspecting users frequently fall victim to unwanted dialers. The installation, configuration and updates of dialer alerts is simply too much for them. The protection has to set in before the dialer is loaded", says Heiko Rittelmeier, provider of the online services against computer fraud and dialers, dialerhilfe.de and computerbetrug.de, about the current security problems. This statement is supported by an AOL survey that showed that 45 percent of the users do not have the technical knowledge to protect themselves effectively.

"When we won the Roland Berger award in 2001, we assumed that 30 percent of the internet users all over the world would want to use automatic protection via the provider and that they would pay for it. The current survey is beyond my wildest predictions", continues Holzer.

Security test on the internet
Internet browser:
http://www.safersurf.com/english/computerbetrug/test_browser.html
eMail program:
http://www.safersurf.com/english/computerbetrug/test_email.html