8 November 2007
According to recent figures, over a quarter of all spam email in the third quarter of 2007 originated in the USA. South Korea is the world's second biggest producer of unsolicited email, but is only responsible for 5.2% per cent of all spam compared America's 28.4% per cent. The UK is tenth in the list of those responsible for spam, and accounts for 2.4% of all spam, according to security firm Sophos.
It seems as though a major American spammer is arrested every other week at the moment, but despite these high-profile lawbreakers being put away, the US continues to relay far more spam than any other nation on the planet,
said Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos.
One of the world's best known spammers, Robert Soloway, was arrested in the USA in May 2007 but according to email management company SoftScan the decrease in spam levels was minimal.
According to Sophos the problem of spam is down to the huge network of robot computers, designed by hackers and programmed to send out vast quantities of email without their owners' knowledge.
Theriault suggests that this problem cannot be attributed to simply a few criminals trying to make fast money, but thousands of hijackers controlling thousands of reprogrammed PC’s.
Theriault explains:
The only way we're going to reduce the problem is if US authorities invest a lot more in educating computer users of the dangers, while ensuring ISPs step up their monitoring efforts to identify these compromised machines as early as possible.
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