For the second year in a row, Burlington, Ont. has been deemed the riskiest city for cybercrime in the country.

The report, commissioned by Symantec, the makers of the Norton anti-virus protection software, highlights the potential risk factors that make consumers potentially vulnerable to cybercrime.

The annual study looked at several factors including actual cybercrimes that took place in the city including attempted malware infections, attempted web attacks, attempted spamming and attempted bots that run automated tasks over the Internet.

It also studied social factors such as how much money people spend on PCs, the number of Wi-Fi hotspots in the city, prevalence of social networking within the population and access to the Internet.

The 10 riskiest cities are:

Burlington, Ont.

Port Coquitlam, B.C.

Vancouver, B.C.

Langley, B.C.

Calgary, Alta.

Fredericton, N.B.

Toronto, Ont.

New Westminster, B.C.

Edmonton, Alta.

Victoria, B.C.

"It's important to understand that you are not going to get a virus as soon as you walk into Burlington, but there are social factors that make you more at risk and those are the things that consumers need to be aware of," said Lynn Hargrove, director of customer solutions at Symantec Canada, told CTV's Canada AM. "Basically the best practice is to be surf safe."

Burlington was a prime candidate for the online risks due to its growth and affluence, Hargrove said. Residents are spending money on PCs, they have numerous devices connected to the Internet and they are tech savvy. This increased activity inevitably puts them in the riskier category.

The growing reliance on smartphones has also caused a problem for cybercrime, Hargrove said.

"The explosion of smartphones, Internet use, instant messaging has changed the landscape. People don't understand that the things that are on your smartphone are pretty much the same as their PC and they need to protect that smartphone. They need to make sure that they can lock it down."

And the burgeoning use of free Wi-Fi has also proven to be a hotbed for criminal activity as most have poor security and do not encrypt the data before its passes through cyberspace. This makes it easy for hackers to steal personal information, Hargrove said.