Despite the fact that this country has enacted laws and sentenced numerous spammers to prison, 26% of the world’s spam still originates from here.
“Although it is the leading country, this figure has significantly decreased from last year (42%). Clearly, anti-spam forces, authorities, and Internet service providers in North America are effectively working to gradually reduce spam this year,” affirmed Graham Cluley, a security advisor at Sophos.
While the United States is witnessing many positive signs, the increasing use of broadband in South Korea and China has turned these two countries into attractive targets for cybercriminals. The spam rate in South Korea is currently 20% (up from 12% in 2004), while the most populous country in the world has risen from 9% to 16%. The total amount of spam sent worldwide has not changed much compared to last year.
Spammers often use malicious software to gain control of computers, linking them into botnets to send out mass messages from these systems, or to serve future plans.
Broadband, combined with the use of outdated versions of the Windows operating system, is the primary reason for the flood of spam. Legal actions and improved security features of Windows XP Service Pack 2 have discouraged many spammers, but the most effective solution is for network service providers to prevent users from setting up servers through “port 25” – which is used to authenticate their systems as email servers. However, most ISPs are reluctant to block port 25, primarily because the process is relatively time-consuming and costly.
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