Spam News

Spam report: U.S. tops Q2 list of spam-sending countries

Monday, July 20, 2009

Spam email relaying PCs - called bots or botnets - typically reside in a handful of high-tech countries with plenty of internet users. In the second quarter of 2009, chances were better than one-in-six that a spam email was sent from a PC in the United States, according to internet security firm Sophos.

In its quarterly list of the top 12 spam relaying countries, called the "dirty dozen," Sophos said the U.S. ranked first, sending 15.6 percent of all spam. In contrast, Russia, a former spam superpower, fell from second last year to ninth in the most recent survey, sending just 3.2 percent of spam.

Sophos said the problem continues to be the number of unprotected PCs in the U.S. that have been infected by malware programmed by cybercriminals to send out junk email.

"If America could clean up its compromised PCs it would be a considerable benefit to everyone around the world who uses the [internet]," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "All web users need to properly defend their computers from attack and pledge to never act upon spam messages."

A recent survey by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group found that 12 percent of non-expert computer users have responded to spam because they were interested in the product or service offered.