VIRUS COMPANY, Sophos, says Americans are still the world’s biggest spammers, despite some successs in arresting the phenomenon in the USA. The Chinese are catching up, though.Around 60 per cent of the world’s spam is circulated by zombies, says Sophos and spam may still make up over 60 per cent of the email bouncing around the Interweb’s servers.
According to Sophos’ chief mouthpiece Graham Cluley, the latest figures are actually “good news for the US” as the reductions achieved in the flow of Stateside spam show tha “tougher sentences being dished out are clearly making spammers feel the heat,”
However, Cluley singled out Microsoft whizz Bill Gates for criticism for who suggestinig two years ago yesterday that spam would be eradicated within, um, two years.The figues, says Cluley are “not such good news for Bill Gates’s skills as a fortune teller, as spam is clearly not a thing of the past.
“Email users worldwide are still being bombarded by all manner of unsolicited messages, and it must be said that, two years on, Gates’ famous prediction now looks extraordinarily optimistic,” he explains.
UK computer users are not so clueless, says Cluley: “Users in the UK are putting the squeeze on spammers by better protecting their computers from being turned into spam-relaying zombies. It’s encouraging to see that the UK no longer occupies one of the top twelve positions,” he gushed.
“In contrast, the amount of non-English language spam continues to grow – proof that spammers are attempting to exploit every corner of the global market with their money-making schemes.”
Here’s Sophos’ top ten list of spammers’ hideouts:
1. United States, 24.5 percent
2. China, 22.3 percent
3. South Korea, 9.7 percent
4. France, 5 percent
5. Canada, 3 percent
6. Brazil, 2.6 percent
7. Spain, 2.5 percent
8. Austria, 2.4 percent
9. Taiwan, 2.1 percent
10. Poland, 2 percent
News source: Theinquirer
