India Is The Number 2 Spam Offender World Over

IT security and control firm Sophos has published the latest report into the 'Dirty Dozen' spam-relaying countries, covering the third quarter of 2010.

Since the second quarter this year, the spam output from the United States has increased significantly from 15.2% to 18.6% of global spam, making the country responsible for nearly one in five junk emails, and meaning that the USA contributes nearly 2.5 times more spam than the next worse offender, India.

The top 12 spam relaying countries for July to September 2010 are as follows—

1. United States - 18.6%

2. India - 7.6%

3. Brazil - 5.7%
       
4. France - 5.4 %  

5. UK - 5.0%
  
6. Germany - 3.4%

7. Russia - 3.0%

8. S Korea - 3.0%   

9. Vietnam - 2.9%

10. Italy - 2.8%

11. Romania - 2.3%

12. Spain - 1.8%

13. Others - 38.5%   

Almost all of this spam comes from malware-infected computers (known as bots or zombies) that are being controlled by 'botherder' cybercriminals.  One of the primary tactics used by cybercriminals to grow botnets involves tricking computer users into clicking malicious links - either contained in spam email or social networking messages - which direct computers to malware infected webpages.