The data is the result of a major European Commission survey conducted during the second quarter of last year among individuals from all 27 member states of the EU.
Delving into the Eurostat statistics reveals that Bulgaria had the highest infection rate, with 58% of respondents saying their computers were affected by some type of malware. They were followed by Malta (50%), Slovakia (47%), Hungary (46%) and Italy (45%).
The EU country with the lowest infection count was Austria (14%), whilst other countries with low rates included Ireland (15%), Finland (20%) and Germany (22%).
On average, 4% of European internet users said they had to deal with privacy violations, such as the exposure of their personal data, while 3% suffered monetary loss as the result of phishing attacks.
Infosecurity notes that the UK had the second highest rate in the monetary loss category, with 7% of users reporting problems. Latvia was first with 8%, and the top four was completed by Malta and Austria with 5% in each country.
It's not all doom and gloom, however, as 84% of the several thousand respondents to the survey said they used an IT security application to defend their computers against infection.
Among the member states, more than 90% of internet users in the Netherlands (96%), Luxemburg, Malta and Finland (all 91%) used IT security software, while it was less than two-thirds in Latvia (62%), Romania (64%) and Estonia (65%).