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U.S. is World Leader in Spam
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."
...and its spamming leader.
That way, Sophos themselves might produce a little less spam...
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
So many broadband & other high-speed connections left wide open that can relay data.
thelikesofwhich.com
What are you talking about? I should be getting my million dollars from Nigeria in the mail next week!
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.
While you Americans are spamming the world, we Canucks are gulping down herbal viagra, slathering growth cream on our willies and Making Money Fast.. Laugh at us, will you?!
Trolling is a art,
I wonder if the recently passes Federal Anti-Spam legislation has had any effect on these numbers. Obviously not a big enough one, since according to these figures, so much spam still comes from the U.S. If these numbers can be tabulated, can they not also report the offenders to the police?
I also wonder if there is any way to bring the issue of unprotected computers to the public. Perhaps negligence penalties of some sort? I don't want to punish the wrong people, but it would be a lot harder to hack into all of these systems if they were administered properly.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Without having some idea of what fraction of a country's email traffic is spam, these numbers just tell you which countries have a bigger internet presence, and absolutely nothing more.
This isn't who is writing the email is. It's where the computer that sends it out is. The article mentions that Russia should be higher on the list but a lot of SPAM is sent through compromised computers in America.
For example, a Nigerian email sent from a hotmail/yahoo account (they almost all are) would seemingly, by this standard, come from the US.
And then there's the thing they themselves point out; their methods of determining origin only go so far, hijacked machines / email routers configured to "wash" the headers of relayed stuff also go a long way to making the numbers invalid.
I still say the ultimate revenge is to paper-spam the big spammers. Sign them up for hundreds of thousands of magazines and all the rest.
The coup de grace would be then to package and mail a spammer the contents of my cats' litterbox the day after feeding them beef 'n' bean leftovers.
Of course the US is the leading producer of SPAM. It was invented here. And according to the SPAM Museum, Hormel produces 435 cans of spam PER MINUTE in Austin, Minnesota.
Are you Corn Fed?
Wow... when I see my next ad for "enlargment pills" I'll smile with delight that the ad I'm looking at was made in America...
Did I mention that by smile I mean Be menacingly overcome... and by delight I actually mean rage... sweet glorious rage.
Another reason for my heart to swell with pride for my country
The original generic sig.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
A lot comes from Asian computers, but if you look into the spam itself (what it sells -> who is actually selling it), most comes in fact from the US.
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
One of the most effective means of dealing with Spam & when being required to hand out an email address is Spamgourmet (http://www.spamgourmet.com). You create an account and can then use unique email addresses of the form ..@spamgourmet.com . The cool thing about this is that for each email received on this account the counter is decreased and once it reaches zero all further emails will be discarded. This is great to hand out if you're ordering something from an online store and only want to receive 1-3 emails for order confirmation/shipment but not get any future spams.
The service is free and offers a couple of other neat features. I've been using it for about a year and it's been very reliable.
Highly recommended.
Heiko
Read the response by the second guy to respond to me. Both legitimate and illegitimate email are going to track with the number of total servers (scaled by how many are unprotected) and number of internet-connected citizens (scaled by how many are internet-connected) among other variables he mentioned.
I mean, actually think about what you're saying. You would congratulate Antarctica for generating 0 spam. If you want to look at this without considering "ham" emails, look at the spam difference - (spam sent = spam received). I would argue that even this difference should be fractioned by how many total emails are sent received which really is a decent measure of internet presence, but even without it, you at least separate net spam "donors" from "recipients"
Honestly, if you don't normalize variables in comparing large sample sets with small, you absolutely cannot compare raw numbers. I could recommend statistical reference texts if you like.
...but wait. Before ya know it, sending spam will be offshored to India too.
What?! The home of capitalism is also the home of spam?! How could this be? /sarcasm
WURD!!
Hey, don't be so down on yourselves. The US is the world leader in lots of things. Military spending, patent lawsuits, oil consumption...
Nah, it's just because we have so many more computers for the bad guys to zombify.
I agree. Just looking at the horribly butchered English that is in 95% of the spam that I get tells me that it not written by someone who's first language is English.
...not written by someone who's first language is English.
Like you, say?
Haida Manga
I think it is time that ISPs block, by default, all outbound port 25 traffic. Customers can either:
- Use the ISPs mail server (this accomodates 90% right away)
- Use a VPN or SMTP+AUTH(+SSL) on an alternate port to connect to their SMTP server of choice (this accomodates another 9%)
- For the remaining few that just have to run their own SMTP server, let them have a static IP and open up the ports
Of course, some consumer ISPs won't be willing to deal with the headaches of option #3, or perhaps might charge a bit more for it, which is entirely fair. Businesses need to block all egress port 25 period, there is rarely a legitamate need for an employee to run their own SMTP server (unless they work in the IT department, but then they can probably open the port up themselves).Its always inches or pounds.
I've never received anything promising to add centimeters or lose kilograms.