Hong Kong Again Emerged The Most Spammed Country

According to MessageLabs, Hong Kong experienced the maximum increase in spam levels that rose 13.2% in September 2008 to occupy the place of the highest spammed region with spam rates at 79.6% of the total e-mail sent.

Announcing the findings of MessageLabs Intelligence Report for September 2008, the company said that the current results echo earlier results in April 2008 and May 2008 when Hong Kong was the worst spammed country.

According to the security specialists, Hong Kong usually remains among the three highest spammed countries in the world.

Moreover, Hong Kong is a global commercial and financial hub, having a high percentage of foreign, especially western businesses, according to Mark Sunner, Chief Security Analyst of MessageLabs,. Consequently, online security threats hitting organizations located in Hong Kong increasingly resemble those confronted across the world in both nature and scale, as reported by ComputerWorld on October 20, 2008.

Sunner further said that although the spam rate in Hong Kong declined in August 2008, local-language spam made up 7% of all spam heading particularly for Hong Kong.

In addition, the report states that that sexually explicit and adult Web content made up 1.7% of the total Web content blocked in September 2008. This indicates that companies have stepped up to face the risks emerging from the World Wide Web as well as proactively safeguarding their business from those threats. At the same time, they are maintaining worker productivity and acceptable usage procedures.

Moreover, according to the report, analysis of security activity shows that 45.9% of the total web-borne malware blocked were new during September 2008. Further, the world ratio of viruses through e-mail in total e-mail from previously unknown and new malicious sources was 0.76% during the month. Also, 6.3% of malware through e-mail contained links pointing to malicious Websites, declined by 11.3% since August 2008.

Also, states the report that e-mail traffic dispatched to the US, U.K, Australia, Germany and Hong Kong represents over 97% of the worldwide spam volumes that MessageLabs filters.

Related article: Hong Kong - Jail Clerk Hacked Computer to Date Prisoners’ Girlfriends

» SPAMfighter News - 10/27/2008