Arstechnica: American spam slowing; Europe, Asia taking over - Anders Bylund

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American spam slowing; Europe, Asia taking over - Anders Bylund

The most recent global spam study conducted by Sophos shows China closing in on the US when it comes to relaying spam, and the Asian markets together have put some distance between itself and former spam leader North America. In 2004, over half of all spam was sent through the US, but today, that number has dropped to just 23.1 percent according to the report. China relays 21.9 percent of the junk e-mail traffic, and South Korea rounds out the top three with 9.8 percent. Asian spam adds up to 42.8 percent of the total, and North American runs neck-and-neck with Europe at 25.6 and 25 percent, respectively. A Sophos spokesman explains that the American drop in the rankings is due to the intensified efforts to find spammers within US borders and slap them with high fines. By contrast, some European countries such as Poland and Spain have seen their spam totals increase, presumably due to a lack of governmental effort to control the problem. It's important to note that this study does not talk about where the spam messages were first conceived of, composed, and scheduled for delivery. It looks at the mail relay point, which can be quite different as spam kings try to cover their tracks. They often do this by operating through networks of virus-infected computers.

The spam study is an ongoing project, wherein security firm Sophos collects spam via junk mail honeypots around the world and generates periodic reports from the data. With more than 13 billion pieces of spam sent daily, and with spambot networks providing incentives for virus writers to crank out new creations, spam has become more than a mere annoyance. If these numbers show us anything, it's that slowing the beast down will take a global effort. In other words, get your spam filters in order, because the problem won't go away anytime soon. For e-mail protection go to http://www.zonelabs.com . ZoneAlarm is free for individual and not-for-profit charitable entity use (excluding governmental entities and educational institutions).