India, second spam generating country
By siliconindia   |   Friday, 15 October 2010, 17:54 IST   |    3 Comments
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India, second spam generating country
Mumbai: India is now the second among the list of spam generating nations, accounting for nearly seven percent of all junk mails send across the world, according to IT security and control firm Sophos. The list is topped by U.S., accounting for almost 19 percent of global spam, making the country responsible for nearly one in five junk emails. In the list India is followed by Brazil (5.7 percent), France (5.4 percent), and UK (5 percent). Sophos' latest report, "Dirty Dozen" shows that almost all spam comes from botnets, Sophos found. In Microsoft-s latest Security Intelligence Report, the company reported that the U.S. was home to some 2.2 million PCs infected with botnet malware - roughly four times as many as Brazil, the country with the next highest amount. "Spam isn't just a nuisance, it's used by cybercriminals as a means of growing their operations," said Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, in a statement. "You should never even be tempted to open a spam message out of curiosity, as it can only take a second to effectively hand over control of your computer to the spammers. If your computer does become part of a botnet, you're also inviting further malware infections, which may compromise your personal or banking details." Sophos also notes a rise in social networking spam during the year's third quarter, such as the 'onMouseOver' exploit on Twitter and numerous Facebook scams used by spammers to generate money from survey Websites. "What's interesting about the Facebook scams is that they exploit human weaknesses to spread - tricking users into filling in a questionnaire if they want to see a shocking picture or video that may not even exist," Cluley said. "Unfortunately, these scams continue to proliferate, with new ones springing up every day, and Facebook seemingly unable to kill them off permanently." The best way for computer users to reduce the risk of being compromised is to run anti-spam and anti-malware protections, behave sensibly when online, and ensure systems are up-to-date with security patches. Sophos recommends that companies automatically update their corporate virus protection, and run a consolidated solution at their email and web gateways to defend against spam and viruses.