Sophos Lists Spam Offenders Country-wise & Continent-wise

Security company Sophos released its recently revised "dirty dozen" list that contains the names of 12 countries, accused of generating the largest amount of global spam. The list ranks the US as the top offender again because it was responsible for 15.8% of the worldwide spam during the first quarter of 2009.

Moreover, countries that rank close to the US are Brazil at 10.2% and China at 7.7%. These countries occupied the second and third places respectively on the dirty dozen list. India too joined the list, occupying the fourth place and accounting for 5.1% of all spam, while Turkey stood fifth with 4.1% spam, according to Sophos' country-wise spam estimates for January-March 2009.

Other nations making their way into the dirty dozen list for Q1 2009 are Argentina, Spain, Poland, Italy, Colombia, Russia and South Korea.

Meanwhile, the new spam report has an interesting point to observe that of the UK getting eliminated from the list as it slid down to the 14th position, producing 2.1% of the global spam during the period. Similarly, Germany also got eliminated from the 'dirty dozen list' for Q1 2009.

Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, said that researchers found it difficult to explain what had really caused the UK spam levels to drop so low. According to him, the explanation might be related to a factor that Brazil and other countries are relaying a greater percentage of spam.

In general, the study found that spam had a huge 97% share in the total e-mail traffic at the commercial e-mail servers during Q1 2009. Here Cluley pointed out how people continued to be tricked by spam in spite of using security software.

Moreover, as per the continent-wise spam analysis, Asia still dominates by accounting for over 33% of the global spam. Although America continues to be the worst offender, North America as a continent experienced a drop in spam volumes throughout Q1 2009, as it slid down from the 2nd to the 3rd place. Furthermore, the list indicates that Asia relayed 34.8% of global spam, Europe -23.6%, North America -19.4%, South America -19% and Africa -2.0%.

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» SPAMfighter News - 5/7/2009