RSSSophos: US Sends Five Times More Spam than Korea
By Tim Conneally | Published October 24, 2007, 3:53 PM
Sophos Labs, an international firm specializing in IT security and control, has published its most recent "dirty dozen" report, saying that the United States relays more spam than any other country by a tremendous margin.
This is not a newly-achieved position, as the company has been releasing these reports for several years, and it is always topped by the United States.
According to this year's report, 28.4% of the world's spam is sent from American computers. The number two spot on the list is held by South Korea at a mere 5.2%.
Canada, which was ranked in second place in 2004, has dropped entirely off of the list, down to only .8%. This is largely thanks to the sustained effort to thwart spammers which began as the "Anti-Spam Action Plan" enacted that same year. China dropped a dramatic 8.5% this year, thanks to a similar Anti-Spam law passed in early 2006.
Spain went from the number 5 position on the list this time last year with 5.8%, to not even being ranked in the top 12 at all this year.
The noticeable trend in "Dirty Dozen" listings between years is for the top countries to pull closer together to an average, while the category "other" increases.
However, the study that yields the list does not attempt to trace the origins of spam, meaning for example, spam sent from a computer in the U.S. that was infected by a Trojan Horse from Italy would register as American spam. It goes on to point to the susceptibility of American computers due to the general lack of consumer education and security monitoring from ISPs.
While US computer users could surely benefit from greater awareness and more protection, one must also remember when looking at this list that the US has more computers per capita to exploit than the other nations listed.
Taking this into account, the list's number four spot - held by Russia at a modest 4.4% - begins to look much more sinister. The country's extremely low per capita distribution of personal computers at 4% can generate the same percentage of the whole world's spam.
Yea what they do not say its cause the US machines are targets for viruses more often then others, that in turn spread the spam from those infected machines...
Point is the safest computer is one that is never connected to the internet... IDK how they get some email addresses. Someone out there is hacking them and selling the info someplace. Because I have 2 accounts now that I never post the address to anywhere and SOMEHOW they get more spam then I care to admit. How they got my address I will never know but they did, and now I can't be rid of them...
Where as my main address I put in all over the place I come to expect will be full of spam, and as such I have filters in place to deal with it...
Also I would hesitate to declare that alot of spam comes from things like Hotmail and yahoo which are US based. But people from any country can register for those now can't they?
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|I don';t think they're actually targeting the US, that'd be pretty hard to program. I think it revolves more around the usage habits in the US making it more likely that such emails (and viruses) will be activated.
Also I would hesitate to declare that alot of spam comes from things like Hotmail and yahoo which are US based. But people from any country can register for those now can't they?
Yep. I don't think they were ever blocked, per-se, but the speeds to the US servers were slow. Now they are hosting servers for these services in various countries (like hotmail.co.uk, which they forgot to renew back in '03).
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|> I don';t think they're actually targeting the US, that'd be pretty hard to program.
Well, unless the spam is in korean, italian, spanish, sandscript, etc, then the target is the u.s.
funny, what could korea be spamming about? "have better sex by eating more seaweed", "live longer by eating more snakes" "government auction on foreclosed rice paddies".....
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|Yeah but the US is a lil bit bigger than korea...
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|What a mess! I got hit with 58, of them little bugger's, a day. Can't some body do somthing?
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|only 58? :)
(Hears the endless chain of numbers to top that)
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|Yep - it's called an Apple Macintosh (grin)
(Or Linux if you want)
--->Can't some body do somthing [sic]?
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|Spam is sent in email. It affects anyone using email, regardless of OS.
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|Wow, you're pretty smart...
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|I must say you're a very intelligent person. A Mac or Linux computer magically thwartes spam? My email address doesn't matter??? Wow, I'm about to go run out and buy one now! What have I been thinking all these years.
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