Actual Symantec report: nothing like reporting (Score 5, Informative)

The Symantec report, the Internet Security Threat Report, 2011 Trends, did not say what the article in the OP claims.

The actual report is here: http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/other_resources/b-istr_main_report_2011_21239364.en-us.pdf . Page 33 of the report, the only discussion of religion, states

"religious and ideological sites were found to have triple the average number of threats per infected site than
adult/pornographic sites."

Three points:

1. The report lumps religious and ideological sites together. Maybe the infected sites were ideological (non-religious) sites. You cannot conclude anything about religious sites at all from that statistic.

2. The report implies nothing about the safety of religious/ideological sites. It just says that if a religious/ideological site is infected, then it has more threats on average than an infected adult site. If the percentage of religious/ideological sites that are infected is lower than the percentage of adult sites that are infected, then religious/ideological sites could be much safer on average. Indeed, figure 16 on page 36 of the report doesn't list religous/ideological sites as dangerous. The point is that the safety of religious/ideological sites as a whole must account for uninfected sites. The "number of threats per infected site" is just about irrelevant.

3. If there is any limit to the gullibility or statistical illiteracy of internet users, I have yet to perceive it.