US and China Top List of Spam-Relaying Countries

jcatcw writes "On Thursday Sophos released a new set of global statistics pointing out the biggest spam relaying countries in the world. Toping the list between April and June of this year were the US and China. 'Sophos senior security consultant Carole Theriault said that while the U.S. remains the top spam dog, there results show an urgent need for countries to join together and take global action. "Once a machine is compromised, it is often used to send out spam for a variety of campaigns," she said. "In a matter of seconds, we can see compromised systems send messages on a dozen different topics from stock scams to diet drugs." Paul Ducklin, Sophos Asia Pacific head of technology, said that spammers are ready to "borrow" any computer illegally to send e-mail regardless of the location.'"

Great Firewall needs Reconfigured.

[Gabrill]

Too bad that "Great Firewall" doesn't work both ways. Shame, really.

A more readable overview

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article, it seems the list looks like this: (The article didn't bother to include an actual, readable list)

   1 U.S.         19.6%
   1 China        19.6%
   3 South-Korea   6.5%
   4 Poland        4.8%
   5 Germany       4.2%
   6 Brazil        4.1%
   7 France        3.3%
   8 Russia        3.1%
   9 Turkey        2.9%
  10 U.K.          2.8%
  11 Italy         2.8%
  12 India         2.5%
     (others)     23.8%

The article states that the US and China have the exact same percentage, even though their numbers suggest that they measured in tens of percents. Isn't that a bit too much of a coincidence?

Also, they mention Europe tops the list if seperate countries are lumped together; however, if I collapse the 5 (not 6) E.U. members I get this list:

  1 U.S.         19.6%
  1 China        19.6%
  3 E.U.         17.9%
  4 South-Korea   6.5%
  5 Brazil        4.1%
  6 Russia        3.1%
  7 Turkey        2.9%
  8 India         2.5%

So I wonder what country they added to Europe; Russia? Or maybe Turkey?

Re:Europe getting in on the action too

[Tim C]

You do realise that the report was released by Sophos, don't you? This isn't a governmental thing, so trying to make it sound like the EU is trying to paint itself in a better light isn't really a valid point this time.

(Incidentally, Sophos is a British company, and we Brits are generally somewhat Eurosceptic; it's not at all surprising to see them not consider the EU as a whole. Mind you, the whole "not being a single country" thing might have something to do with it too...)

In other words ...

[ScrewMaster]

the countries with the most bandwidth available to the general population, and which also have the greatest number of Windows installations and open mail relays, also produce the most spam. Hardly a surprising conclusion.

Those statistics are EXTREMELY misleading

[tempestdata]

As a mail provider I wouldn't be surprised that the US and china were the source of a significant chunk of spam. They (the US especially) have a LOT of email users. What I'm interested is the ratio of good email to spam email. For instance, if the US makes up for 90% of all email sent, then is it really that bad if it makes up 25% of the world's spam? On the other hand Mexico may make up 1% of the world's email, but 90% of the email coming from there could be spam.

The volume of spam should be taking in the context of the usage of email. The RATIO of legit emails to spam is a better indicator of where the spammers are coming from than volume alone

Re:Since spam relays have shifted from servers....

[nacturation]

I think at this point, a nuclear strike is what's required. If people want to run their own SMTP servers, they can apply for permission to do so. Otherwise, whitelist individual SMTP servers as you suggest, or use your ISP's servers where spam checking can be centralized.