US Again Topped ‘Dirty Dozen’ List of Spamming Countries

International Company Sophos Labs that specializes in IT control and security has released its latest 'Dirty Dozen' report describing United States as the worst spam relaying country in the world. Also, the volume of spam originating in the US differs from other nations by substantial margins.

The company, which has been publishing these reports over many years, has always found United States to top the list, hence the declared result is not new.

According to the 2007 report, US-hosted Websites are responsible for relaying 28.4% of total spam, with South Korea following at 5.2% and China, including Hong Kong, being responsible for 4.9% of all spam.

Other countries in the list of worst spam relaying countries are Russia, Brazil and France occupying the fourth, fifth and sixth positions respectively, the report revealed.

Senior Security Consultant Carole Theriault for Sophos said that currently, a high-profile spammer seems to be arrested in America every alternate week, but despite isolating and stopping these major lawbreakers, the US still distributes spam on a scale much larger than any of the other country in the world. BCS published Theriault's statement on October 24, 2007.

Canada, which held the second rank in 2004, is out of the chart after coming down to just 0.8%. This has happened largely due to the enactment of the anti-spam Action Plan in 2006 as a measure to effectively thwart spammers in a sustained manner. China has also reduced its amount of spam to 8.5% in 2007 after passing a similar law against spam in 2006.

Spain has also dropped from the fifth position in 2006 with 5.8% to further below the 12th rank in 2007.

The 'dirty dozen' listings show a trend of the top nations getting closer to a median level of spam while countries in the "other" category increase.

According to experts, educating the general public about the problem and finding solutions could be the most appropriate way to stop spammers. Theriault stressed that the US needs to invest much more to increase user education about the risks of spam while encouraging ISPs to enhance their monitoring activities to fast locate compromised systems.

Related article: US Passes Baton to Asia in Spam Relay

» SPAMfighter News - 11/12/2007