India Overtakes The US As Top Spam Source

India has overtaken the US to become the world’s leading contributor of spam emails, research from Sophos has revealed.

The security company published its ‘Dirty Dozen’ list of spam relaying countries on Monday, noting that between January and March 2012, 9.3 percent of all offending emails were relayed through the Asian subcontinent.

Spam-spewing zombies

India’s rapid rise up the list has been attributed to the nation’s growing number of internet users and the apparent lack of security measures implemented by both ISPs and computer owners. Consequently, a greater number of computers can be compromised to form larger botnets used for spamming.

“The latest stats show that, as more first-time Internet users get online in growing economies, they are not taking measures to block the malware infections that turn their PCs into spam-spewing zombies,” Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, said in a statement.

Other ranking countries on the list include the US, forming 8.9 percent of global spam output, and South Korea, contributing 5.7 percent. Meanwhile, the UK, which appeared at number six on last year’s list, has fallen out of the Dirty Dozen, with a 47 percent decrease in relayed spam year-on-year.

Sophos states that while the overall throughput of spam has dropped since early 2011 with the help from ISPs, the decrease reflects a shift in methods from the spammers. In addition to substituting basic marketing spam with malicious software links used for phishing, spammers are switching to social media platforms to access a broader audience.

While Facebook and Twitter have been used in spam barrages before, Sophos identifies the rising social network Pinterest as a key hotbed on which spammers are launching campaigns.

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