Ohhh – the “dirty dozen” spammers named ‘n shamed- and India comes out as No.1 culprit of pesky mails.
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If you have a spam in your inbox, there’s an almost one in ten chance that it was sent from an Indian PC.
Thats according to secuity gurus, SophosLabs, who revealed India has overtaken the US to become the top contributor to the junk email in 2012, globally.
However, the US is not saint either coming out as No. 2, followed by South Korea and Indonesia.
But there are also some surprises in the dirty dozen including Poland, Italy …and Peru.
Here is the list of top 10 spammers by country Jan – Mar 2012 (courtesy of Sophos)
1. India 9.3%
2. USA 8.3%
3. S Korea 5.7%
4= Indonesia 5.0%
4= Russia 5.0%
6. Italy 4.9%
7. Brazil 4.3%
8. Poland 3.9%
9. Pakistan 3.3%
10. Vietnam 3.2%
11. Taiwan 2.9%
12. Peru 2.5%
Other 41.7%
The vast majority of spam comes from home computers that have been compromised by hackers, and commandeered into a botnet, says SophosLabs Graham Cluley.
“Remote hackers can send spam from recruited computers, as well as potentially steal information or install other malicious code.”
However, it seems the number of spam mail has decreased in the past year partly because of increased efforts of ISPs, but also reflects “a change in tactics by cybercriminals” warns Cluley.
Spammers are finding traditional email spam ineffective, and are turning to the likes of Facebook and Twitter to spread marketing spam campaigns instead.
And while marketing spam decreases, messages that spread malware or attempts to phish usernames, passwords and personal information is increasing.
And even the new social kid on the block Pinterest has been used by spammers to distribute posts linking to webpages offering to sell goods, or earning commission for the spammers.
However, as more first-time internet users from developing countries get online, they are not taking appropriate measures to block the malware infections that turn their PCs into spam-spewing zombies.
Pc users should defend PC’s with up-to-date anti-virus software, and take care over the links that you click on and the software you install.