French companies and businesses are in urgent need of measures to protect themselves from cyber criminals and France has the highest incidence of victims from this growing scourge, a report said on Thursday. The report, published by computer security company Symantec and broadcast on Radio France Internationale (RFI), warned that there were sharp increases in cyber attacks against a host of electronic communications systems, the internet, mobile phones and other devices. As an illustration, it was reported that 41 percent of French smartphone users were targets for criminal acts in the past year, up from 29 percent in the previous 12-month period. The global average for cyber attacks on smartphones is 38 percent. Criminal attacks against phone users by using fake text messages or applications and dishonest advertising were reported by Symantec to have gone up by 52 percent in 2012. The report warned that many people do not know how to install or use anti-virus or other protection for smartphones. The survey also raised the alarm about the lax security by users of social media, with about 43 percent of French uses connecting with people they do not know and another 40 percent who admitted giving their passwords to others