The United States tops spam chart

net1

According to anti-virus firm Sophos, the US sends out more spam than the rest of the world put together, The Register reports.

Researchers at Sophos checked the origins of hundreds of thousands of emails received over two days last week in various locations around the world, and compiled a list of the worst offenders.

The figures show the USA accounts for 56.74 per cent of all spam, with Canada coming a poor second with a 6.80 per cent share. China and Hong Kong sit in third place with 6.24 per cent.

Although the vast majority of spam comes from computers in the US, the picture is not as simple as it appears. Sophos believes that a large percentage of spam actually originates in Russia, with spammers using hijacked PCs in the US to distribute their delightful messages.

"Our intelligence suggests that a large amount of spam originates in Russia, even though it appears at only number 28 in the chart. Some Trojan horses and worms allow spammers to take over third-party computers belonging to innocent parties, and use them for sending spam. More than 30 percent of the world's spam is sent from these compromised computers,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.