Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

U.S. is World Leader in Spam

Posted by michael on from the everyone's-good-at-something dept.

adept256 writes "Sophos outs 'dirty dozen' spam producing countries. And the USA is in the lead by a country mile. 'The United States is far and away the worst offender, accounting for nearly 60 percent of the world's spam. Even though European countries are responsible for less spam, they are still generating millions of junk emails a day,' said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos."

4 of 398 comments (clear)

  1. Why am I not surprised by lavalyn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Spamming computers may appear to be foreign, but in the end, it's nearly always an American source. Or from the Netherlands for some reason in those stupid 419s.

    If you're not blacklisting from Spamhaus's SBL+XBL of spam outfits & open relays, and dialup pools, those ones are natural things to start blocking on connect.

    --
    Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
  2. Re:How about normalizing that data? by g0qi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For too long, US Sys & Law Administrators have taken cover saying that the source of spam is almost always foreign and there's nothing they can do about it. This article is the wake up call. It doesn't matter what email traffic the US generates, but it just proves that much of the spam is from within.

    --
    Yea. I know.
  3. Re:Much from compromised computers by rm007 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    the only thing I find surprising about the list is the high position of Canada - second, 6.8%. Given Canad's relatively small population, that must make them the leader in spam-per-capita - an unpleasant distinction

    Not so surprising, the figure is not really out of whack. While the population is a little more than one tenth - 32 million vs 292 million - higher internet usage levels, especially broadband penetration probably accounts for some of why the Canadian figure is not closer to the 5.7 - 5.9% that you might expect. As other posters have noted, normalizing the data would have helped make more sense of the of the numbers that they present. At any rate, it is safe to assume that too many Canadians and Americans do not secure their computers properly if compromised machines account for so much of the spam.

    --


    I've finally got around to changing my sig
  4. Re:So much for the AXIS OF EVIL... by MCZapf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We probably also have more "entrepreneurs" (spammers and their customers) who are trying to get rich quick. That is, after all, the American Dream.