U.S. Spam Improvement Stalls: Sophos

And we were doing so well. For the first time in two years, the U.S. has failed to decrease the amount of spam relayed through its computers in the second quarter of 2006, Sophos announced yesterday in its quarterly “Dirty Dozen” report.

Also, the U.S. remains the top spam-relaying country in the world, accounting for 23.2% of the world’s spam, the Internet security firm said.

Two years ago, Sophos said the U.S accounted for 56% of the world’s spam.

One reason for the stall in America’s decrease in spam is the widening use of “zombie” computers, or computers that have been hijacked without their owners’ knowledge, by spammers to relay unsolicited e-mail.

“Since the introduction of the Can-Spam legislation in 2004, we’ve seen a regular quarter-on-quarter drop in the proportion of spam coming from the U.S.—until now, that is,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, in a statement. “Given the number of arrests, and the huge fines dished out to guilty spammers, it’s hard to criticize the U.S. for failing to take action. Perhaps the reality is that the statistics can’t be reduced any further unless U.S. home users take action to secure their computers and put a halt to the zombie PC problem.”

Other countries on the Sophos dirty-dozen spam list from No. 2 in descending order are: China, including Hong Kong, which accounts for 20% of the world’s spam; South Korea, which accounts for 7.5%; France, 5.2%; Spain, 4.8%; Poland, 3.6%; Brazil, 3.1%; Italy, 3%; Germany, 2.5%; United Kingdom, 1.8%; Taiwan, 1.7%, and Japan, 1.6%.

Though the U.S. is the No. 1 spam-relaying country, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Tiawan account for almost half of the world’s spam, making Asia the No. 1 spam-relaying continent, according to Sophos.

Also, the newest dirty-dozen country is Italy, which knocked the Netherlands from the No. 11 spot.