The world's biggest spammers

Spam mail has become one of the biggest problems on the Internet; it consumes precious bandwidth, wastes computer resources, and causes huge financial losses to corporations.

And most of the spam that affects people worldwide originates from the United States, according to a report published by Sophos, a global anti-virus and anti-spam specialist.

Researchers scanned all spam messages received over two days last week and listed out the 12 most spamming nations.

The US was followed by South Korea, China, Canada, Brazil, Japan, France, Spain, United Kingdom, Germany, Taiwan and Mexico.

The 12 top spammers were:

* United States: 42.11 per cent
* South Korea: 13.43 per cent
* China (including Hong Kong): 8.44 per cent
* Canada: 5.71 per cent
* Brazil: 3.34 per cent
* Japan: 2.57 per cent
* France: 1.37 per cent
* Spain: 1.18 per cent
* United Kingdom: 1.13 per cent
* Germany: 1.03 per cent
* Taiwan: 1.0 per cent
* Mexico: 0.89 per cent
* Others: 17.8 pre cent

Sophos's findings were based on the analysis of hundreds of thousands of e-mails examined by Sophos spam researchers using honeypots and other measuring systems around the world.

Sophos said that the US is by far the worst offender. The most broadband-connected country in the world, South Korea, has held tightly onto its position as a leading producer of spam, it said.

Sophos reported that spammers are motivated by fast and easy money and many spammers have taken their money-making schemes to the extreme by hacking into innocent third-party computers in an effort to do their dirty work.

It recommended that users must avoid purchasing anything that is advertised via spam.

Sophos researchers also identified 10,724 new viruses so far in 2004, a 51.8 per cent increase in the number of new viruses, bringing the total viruses in existence to 97,535.

Of these, Netsky variants accounted for 41.6 per cent of all viruses reported to Sophos.

The past three years have seen exponential growth of spam in unsolicited junk e-mail. In 2002, spam comprised 25 per cent of all e-mail messages. It swelled to 40 per cent in 2003. But by mid-2004, 60 per cent of all the billions of e-mail messages flying about in cyberspace were spam, says a recent Trend Micro study.