India tops Sophos' 'dirty dozen' list of top spam-relaying countries, as US slips to fourth place
Asia is the world's top spam hotspot, according to Sophos, which has published its latest 'dirty dozen' list of spam-relaying countries.
According to the security vendor's spam traps, the continent is now responsible for relaying 49.7 per cent of all spam, compared with 26.4 per cent for Europe, 11.2 per cent for South America, 8.6 per cent for North America and 3.6 per cent for Africa.
India topped the dirty dozen having been accountable for 11.4 per cent of spam seen in April, May and June, despite the country housing just 5.3 per cent of the world's internet users.
Italy and South Korea were responsible for seven and 6.7 per cent of spam in Q2, respectively, while the US finished fourth on 6.2 per cent, having topped the list as recently as Q4 2011.
Vietnam, Brazil, Pakistan, China, France, Russia, Poland and Taiwan rounded out the ignoble list, while the UK remained out of the top 12 for a fourth consecutive quarter.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said spam still makes up 45-50 per cent of corporate email.
"We all pay the price: our email systems have to process and deliver the message, and our own time is wasted dealing with the spam email once it is in our inbox," he said.
Cluley attributed Asia's dominance in the spam charts to the sheer number of compromised machines in the continent.
