78,000,000,000,000,000,000 (78 quintillion bytes, or 78 exabytes)Number of bytes (which can represent a single number or letter) sent over the Internet last year, according to University of Minnesota researchers. Internet traffic is growing at an annual rate of 50 to 60 percent.
$214.4 BILLIONTotal e-commerce spending in the United States in 2008, the Internet research firm comScore reports. Online spending increased 7 percent last year—nothing like the years immediately prior, which saw growth rates near 20 percent.
1,122,311Number of trojans, worms, viruses, and other types of malicious code identified by Internet security company Symantec in a recent report. A total of 5,060,187 bot-infected computers, which can be remotely controlled to send out spam, were running in late 2007. The Sophos Internet security firm discovered a new infected Web page every 4.5 seconds, on average.
34,916,000,000Number of minutes Internet users in the United States spent viewing social networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace in January 2009 alone, according to comScore. That is 10 percent of all minutes spent online.
5.47Number of subscriptions to adult-content sites per 1,000 households with broadband access in Utah, the state with the highest rate of subscriptions, according to a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Montana has the lowest rate, with 1.92 per 1,000 households. Thirty-six percent of Internet users visit at least one adult Web site per month, comScore reports.
