IT security company 'Sophos' has released its recent report about the leading twelve spam relaying countries for the second quarter of 2010 (Q2-2010). As per the report, the USA continued to dominate as spam polluter with 15.2% of total spam messages - a rise of 13.1% in Q1-2010.
The report states that the UK climbed to the fourth place in the league tables of spam pollution in Q2-2010 from the ninth place in Q1-2010. The UK has come out of the spam hall of shame in previous years, but is now circulating 4.6% of the global spam. Besides, other top spam relaying countries were India (7.7%), Brazil (5.5%) and South Korea (4.2%) at positions second, third and fifth respectively. France, Germany and Italy also appeared in the report at sixth, seventh, eighth places with 4.1%, 4.0% and 3.5% of total spam mails respectively. Some other countries secured place on the list were Russia (2.8%), Vietnam (2.7%), Poland (2.5%) and Romania (2.3%) at ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth positions respectively. The report further reveals that Europe emerged as the leading continent for circulating spam mails as it replaced Asia. In addition, Sophos's global network of spam traps seized 35% of total spam mails coming from European systems. In this sense, Europe was far ahead of Asia and North America in Q2-2010. Asia contributed around 30.9% of the total spam. On the other hand, North America circulated 18.9% of total spam mails. South America (11.5%) and Africa (2.5%) were the other two continents released spam mails in Q2-2010. As per Sophos, spam has become extremely harmful. It has gone beyond advertising unwanted goods and started spreading links to harmful sites and computer-infecting malware. Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, stated that spam would remain a huge problem as long as it generates profit for the hackers. For hackers, ii is purely commercial sense to continue it even if a small share of users clicks on the links, as per the news by thinq on July 14, 2010.
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