-While America backs the entertainment and software cartels, laying mercilessly into countries such as China and Japan for so-called 'piracy' crimes, it's Number One as the primary source of the world's worst email garbage, says the Sophos security company.

The US, “remains stuck at the top of the chart and is the source of 23.2 percent of the world's spam,” says the company. “Its closest rivals are China and South Korea, although both of these nations have managed to reduce their statistics since Q1 2006. The vast majority of this spam is relayed by 'zombies', also known as botnet computers, hijacked by Trojan horses, worms and viruses under the control of hackers.”

The top 12 “spam relaying countries” are:

April to June 2006

1. United States, 23.2%
2. China (including Hong Kong), 20.0%
3. S Korea, 7.5%
4. France, 5.2%
5. Spain, 4.8%
6. Poland, 3.6%
7. Brazil, 3.1%
8. Italy, 3.0%
9. Germany, 2.5%
10. United Kingdom, 1.8%
11. Taiwan, 1.7%
12. Japan, 1.6%
Others, 22.0%

America rulz as THE source, but Asia accounts for more spam than any other continent, although “spam relaying” in Europe, “continues to become more prevalent,” says Sophos. “While in Q1 2006, 25 percent of the world's spam was sent out from European countries, the figure has now reached 27.1 percent. Europe has now overtaken North America as a spreader of spam.”

The breakdown of spam relaying by continent is:

April to June 2006
Asia, 40.2%
Europe, 27.1%
North America, 25.7%
South America, 5.5%
Australasia, 0.7%
Africa, 0.7%
Other, 0.1%

Meanwhile, although Russia is off the list, there's evidence that Russian spammers may be controlling vast networks of zombie PCs, states Sophos, saying it recently discovered a Russian spamming price list which showed that $500 USD would buy email distribution to eleven million Russian email addresses and, “On top of this companies could buy distribution to one million addresses in any country they wanted for just 50 USD.”

A key development in 2006 so far has been the increase in spam containing embedded images, which has risen sharply from 18.2 percent in January to 35.9 percent in June, adds the company.

Also See:
PC Magazine - Sophos reveals latest spam relaying countries, July 24, 2006