India Tops as Spam Contributor

Bangalore: It has been discovered that India has solidified its position as the biggest global contributor to the junk email problem. Despite only 5 percent of the world’s Internet users, India tops the list of spam contributors during the month of April, May and June, as reported by SophosLabs, a developer and vendor of security software and hardware including anti-virus, anti-spam and anti-spyware.

India (11.4 percent), recently achieved this distinction, beating the U.S. to become the leading spewer of spam emails. Other countries like Italy (6.2 percent), S Korea (6.7 percent), U.S.A. (7.0 percent) and Vietnam (5.8 percent) are some of the countries that top as the leading spam contributor. “This is one record India doesn’t want so much,” said Sanjay Katkar, chief technology officer with Quick Heal, a security firm, as reported by Latimes.com.

There are about 7 million computer users a month in India itself, many of them inexperienced and using pirated software or outdated operating systems. Hackers take control of the poorly- protected computers, without the owners realizing- and send out unwanted money-making messages and other dubious links. Everyone has a responsibility to ensure that their system is properly defended against such attacks. If they take no care over their computers, they are simply adding to the world’s spam problem.  As more first time internet users get online in growing economies like India, they are not taking appropriate measures to block the malware infections that turn their PCs into spam-spewing zombies.