Spam countries revealed

Though the US remains the single worst offender, Asian states now contribute a noticeably larger proportion of worldwide spam than for a similar period in 2010.

Jumping up the table 5 places, South Korea is 2nd to the United States, contributing 9.6% of all world spam e-mails. A few Asian countries Indonesia, Pakistan, Taiwan and Vietnam have joined the Soiled Dozen since Q3 2010, with India dropping to 3rd place behind South Korea and being answerable for 8.8% of the planet's spam. The top twelve spam relaying nations for July to Sep 2011 are : US 11.3% S Korea 9.6% India 8.8% Russia 7.9% Brazil 5.7% Taiwan 3.8% Vietnam 3.5% Indonesia 3.3% Ukraine 3.1% Romania 2.8% Pakistan 2.0% Italy 1.9% 57 S. A. 0.18% Other36.3% Spam that tries to make its way into users' e-mail accounts can vary greatly from irritating ads to noxious attacks. In the worst cases, a spam message could be engineered to infect PCs with a Trojan pony or phish banking references. "The latest stats suggest that, as more folks get online in The East, they don't seem to be taking the right measures to guard their PCs from infection, which ends up in the expansion of botnets," asserts Brett Myroff, Chief Executive of Sophos distributor, NetXactics. "The majority of spam e-mails are distributed by botnets networks of infected machines ( undead ) which are under the control over spammers." PC users risk becoming part of botnets if they don't run recent anti virus software and the newest security patches. Everyday systems of infection include clicking on links or attachments in spam messages. The issue is not restricted to standard e-mail ; social networking services are also exploited by scammers to spread profit making surveys through spammed-out messages. Botnets are also utilized by cyber law breakers to launch Distributed Denial of Service attacks ( DDoS ), where thousands of zombie PCs are used to attach to a particular internet site, causing it offline as it struggles to deal with the rise in traffic.

The proportion of spam coming from The East has increased, with over 1/2 of all spam messages now being relayed thru the continent. The top spam-relaying continents during July to Sep 2011 include : Pacific Rim 50.1% Europe 21.4% Northern America 14.2% South America 10.6% Africa 3.0% Other 0.7% During Q3 2010, Far East was accountable for thirty percent of all spam.

The output has increased to 50.1% from 35.1% at the start of 2011. Europe contributes over 10 % less spam than it probably did in the same period last year, and a few Western european countries have left the Mucky Dozen. The United Kingdom, at fifth place, contributing five pc of world spam in Q3 2010, now lives in 16th place overall, accountable for relaying 1.6% of spam. "If you receive spam messages, check any filter settings you could have and ensure your security software is running and has the newest patches installed," Myroff says.