Posted: 27th Feb, 2004 By: MarkJ
New research by Internet security firm Sophos has revealed what most of us already knew, that the majority of junk e-mail (SPAM) comes from the USA - 56.74% to be exact:
In second place ranks Canada (6.80 per cent), followed by China with 6.24 per cent. The UK accounts for 1.31 per cent of global spam messages.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said: The US is far and away the worst offender, accounting for nearly 60 per cent of the world's spam. Even though European countries are responsible for less spam, they are still generating millions of junk emails a day.
But according to Sophos, although a lot of spam appears to originate from US computers, much of it is sent without the computer owner's knowledge. The report suggests that a large amount of spam originates in Russia but hackers could be breaking into computers in other countries and sending out spam via 'infected' PCs.So, as with so many things linked to the Internets murky underbelly, all is not quite what it seems. The
VNUNet item points out that Spain comes bottom (12th) of the list.
Interestingly the BBC has also done a related item
HERE, which looks at several under-development methods to legitimise e-mail and hopefully cut out the junk.