Pitcairn Islands a cesspit of spam, Australia in 85th spot

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 11 March 2008 20:58

Business IT - Security

The US, Russia and China aren’t in the top 10 countries ‘relaying the most spam per capita’, with the Pitcairn Islands rocketing to number 1, as Australia drops from 33rd spot to the vastly lower 85th position – but not as low as China.

A report by anti-virus and Internet security firm Sophos has unveiled the top 10 countries relaying the most spam per capita, with most on the list islands and/or small countries, although the biggest island in the world, Australia, pops into the 85th spot.

Sophos unveil that the Pitcairn Islands relay most spam per person, with the “top three spam-relaying countries - the United States, Russia and China - which accounted for 33.8 percent of all spam in Q4 2007, notably absent from the chart”, clearly showing the list changes depending on your criteria.

The following shows the top ten countries based on spam emitted per capita:

1. The Pitcairn Islands
2. Niue
3. Tokelau
4. Anguilla
5. The Faroe Islands
6. Monaco
7. Bermuda
8. Falkland Islands
9. Andorra
10. Aruba

Sophos say that when the top three spam-relaying countries are considered in terms of population, the United States is in 64th position, Russia in 45th, and China plummets to a lowly 132nd, although with 1.2+ billion people, their low ranking is hardly a surprise.

Explaining the findings, Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos said that: "Between October-December 2007, the US relayed far more spam than any other country due to the sheer number of computers in the country that had been taken over by remote hackers. But when measuring spam emitted per capita, the results are very different.”

Theriault continued that: “Most of the countries in this chart have very small populations compared to the usual offenders, but their totals are sky high when it comes to spam emitted on a per-person basis. Just because your PC is located on a remote island in the South Pacific doesn't mean it's not contributing to the global spam problem. All computer users, wherever they are in the world, need to wake up to the threats and ensure their PCs are properly protected."

Naturally, Sophos would like you to use their software, but clearly they don't have the only solutions. Still, if only a greater number of people would learn about PC security and proactively protect their computers, you'd imagine it would have a dramatic effect on the amount of spam being sent out on a daily basis.

So, what about some other big spam-relaying countries that have also dropped down the list? And what's the mind-numbingly simple way for email users of the world to unite to stop the incentive to send spam dead in its tracks? Please read onto page 2.