Some 20 per cent of computers worldwide are riddled with bugs, and machines in the UK and Germany are among the worst affected in Europe, according to security software firm McAfee.

The company, which yesterday introduced a real-time virus map that tracks bug activity worldwide, scanned nearly 39 billion files in the computers of 780,000 subscribers around the globe.

Doug Cavit, McAfee's chief information officer, said: "By having this valuable intelligence on hand, we are able to track virus trends, anticipate outbreaks, alert the public to them and rapidly deploy solutions when an outbreak occurs."

The supplier found that the Love Bug virus is still highly active, with 1.4 million incidences of it discovered in the last 30 days alone. The second most active virus is the APStrojan.qa Trojan Horse bug, which steals America Online passwords, and of which there were 292,794 reported incidences.

Others rampant viruses include W95/MTXgen, W32/FunLove.gen and 32Kriz.4050.

But according to McAfee, computers in the UK and Germany had the highest infection rate in Europe, while Saudi Arabia ranked first in Asia. In the US, California and Washington State also had high infection levels, with up to 100,000 computers hit.

The company compiled information for its real-time virus tracking map, which can be accessed at www.mcafee.com, using its bug scanning service which monitors thousands of computers worldwide. It also collated data sent in by subscribers and trial users, both of which must agree to share data with the company.