Asia tops spam relay league, says Sophos

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 11 May 2011 18:26

Business IT - Security

Security software vendor Sophos has released its latest statistics on spam relaying, and Asia has seized the top spot from Europe. Not that it's anything to be proud of.

35.1% of the world's spam is relayed through computers in Asia, according to security vendor Sophos. That's pushed Europe into second place with 32.0%.

The contribution of different countries and regions to the spam problem appears to be driven partly by the number of computers, and also how carefully they are secured.

The growing China and India markets represent a large chunk of the world's population, so it's not surprising they are moving up the league table as more of their citizens can afford computers.

At this stage, the only Asian nations to appear in the Sophos 'dirty dozen' are India and South Korea. India accounted for 7.1% of spam, behind the US (a whopping 13.7%) but ahead of Russia (6.6%) and Brazil (6.4%).

South Korea - an attractive target due to the widespread use of very high speed connections -  was fifth with 3.8%

What about Australia? See page 2.