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U.S. and China in the Lead

U.S. and China in the Lead

By Bruce Einhorn

The battle against spam keeps spreading. According to recent figures from Sophos, the British provider of anti-spamming software, the U.S. remains the largest source of spam, accounting for almost 20% of the global total; China, including Hong Kong, is second, with 10%. That's not that surprising, since the U.S. is the world's largest economy and China has the world's largest online population. "You would expect those countries to dominate," says Paul Ducklin, head of Asia-Pacific technology for Sophos. The fact that the two giants combined account for less than a third of the world's spam, though, concerns Ducklin. "It indicates the bad guys are finding places all over the world, with ever-increasing number," he says.

Countries that seem to fare well on the Sophos rankings, generating just 0.1% or 0.2% of the world's spam, in many cases have very limited Internet connectivity; the fact that they show up at all on the charts indicates the extent of the problem. "These are places where it's not easy or cheap to get on the Internet," says Ducklin. "But the bad guys don't care."

Just because a country's computers send out spam doesn't mean that country is a haven for spammers. Many, if not most, of the world's junk e-mail experts take advantage of security weaknesses to hijack computers from a distance. For more on their favorite targets, read on.

Data: Sophos, InternetWorldStats.com