Swine scores over Shilpa

The hog gives SRK and Big B a run for their money on the Internet, courtesy swine flu

The expression hogging the limelight is proving true literally with the swine cornering the lion's share of hits on the Internet. What makes the pony-tailed animals' victory even sweeter is that the losers are B-town biggies like Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan and Shilpa Shetty.

The swine flu pandemic has made the hog a household name. The swine influenza virus is any strain of the influenza family of viruses that is usually hosted by or is endemic in pigs.

According to cyber experts, the recent search trends on Google show that netizens surfing the Web for information on the influenza has made 'swine' the most searched word on the Internet.u00a0

Google tends, a Google tool that records the online search trends, proves that 'swine' was searched more than popular bollywood celebrities during the last thirty days. Swine ruled the mind of Indian netizens for the last more than a month.

The animal has unseated Hottie Shilpa Shetty, who was the most searched celebrity during the IPL-2.
Cyber experts said the steep rise in the search volume for the word swine is due to the widespread of the H1N1 virus.

The trend shows the volume of search suddenly picked up around mid April when the H1N1 started spreading. Internet expert says everyone is searching about the virus, precautions, treatment and the vaccine.

Not just that. Hundreds of communities on popular social networking websites like Orkut and Facebook have come up on swine flu. Apart from that various online games have come up to cash in on the popularity of the viral disease's popularity on the Internet.

And, when everybody is making hay can cyber criminals be far. The crooks have started writing malicious codes, incorporating the word 'swine' to get maximum impact. Sapmmers have launched numerous attacks in the name of swine flu vaccine, Tamiflu.

According to the international cyber security providers, millions of spam mails are flooding the Internet, directing recipients to fake online pharmacies or enticing users to click on links leading to malicious software.

Swine saga
Swine influenza was first proposed to be a disease related to human influenza during the 1918 flu pandemic, when pigs became sick at the same time as humans. Swine flu has been reported numerous times as a zoonosis in humans, usually with limited distribution, rarely with a widespread distribution. Outbreaks in swine are common and cause significant economic losses in industry, primarily by causing stunting and extended time to market. For example, this disease costs the British meat industry about u00a365 million every year.