US Number One (spam source)
p2pnet.net News:-While America backs the entertainment and software cartels, laying mercilessly into countries such as China and Japan for so-called ‘piracy’ crimes, it’s Number One as the primary source of the world’s worst email garbage, says the Sophos security company.
The US, “remains stuck at the top of the chart and is the source of 23.2 percent of the world’s spam,” says the company. “Its closest rivals are China and South Korea, although both of these nations have managed to reduce their statistics since Q1 2006. The vast majority of this spam is relayed by ‘zombies’, also known as botnet computers, hijacked by Trojan horses, worms and viruses under the control of hackers.”
The top 12 “spam relaying countries” are:
April to June 2006
1. United States, 23.2%
2. China (including Hong Kong), 20.0%
3. S Korea, 7.5%
4. France, 5.2%
5. Spain, 4.8%
6. Poland, 3.6%
7. Brazil, 3.1%
8. Italy, 3.0%
9. Germany, 2.5%
10. United Kingdom, 1.8%
11. Taiwan, 1.7%
12. Japan, 1.6%
Others, 22.0%
America rulz as THE source, but Asia accounts for more spam than any other continent, although “spam relaying” in Europe, “continues to become more prevalent,” says Sophos. “While in Q1 2006, 25 percent of the world’s spam was sent out from European countries, the figure has now reached 27.1 percent. Europe has now overtaken North America as a spreader of spam.”
The breakdown of spam relaying by continent is:
April to June 2006
Asia, 40.2%
Europe, 27.1%
North America, 25.7%
South America, 5.5%
Australasia, 0.7%
Africa, 0.7%
Other, 0.1%
Meanwhile, although Russia is off the list, there’s evidence that Russian spammers may be controlling vast networks of zombie PCs, states Sophos, saying it recently discovered a Russian spamming price list which showed that $500 USD would buy email distribution to eleven million Russian email addresses and, “On top of this companies could buy distribution to one million addresses in any country they wanted for just 50 USD.”
A key development in 2006 so far has been the increase in spam containing embedded images, which has risen sharply from 18.2 percent in January to 35.9 percent in June, adds the company.
Also See:
PC Magazine – Sophos reveals latest spam relaying countries, July 24, 2006
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July 24th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
The US has always been the #1 spam source.
July 25th, 2006 at 5:02 am
How many time have viewers been annoyed by the pop-up banners that appear on Turner channels during the airing of a show. I am not talking about the advertisements that appear during regular commercial breaks, but rather the pop-up banners appearing at the botton of the screen during the movie or show. These have become so annoying that I no longer view Turner channels. I have also let Turner broadcasting know why they have lost at least one viewer. Here is an email that I fired off to tbsinfo@turner.com :
I have tried several times to watch TBS, TNT, and other Turner channels.
Just tonight I started to watch “Phone Booth” on TNT. Commercials not only
took too much of the viewing time, but they were also popping up on the
screen during the time the movie was playing. “30 Days” ads or banners
popping up on the bottom of the screen are very annoying. This may now be
the standard practice for TBS as well as other Turner stations, but it is not
appreciated by many.
People who subscribe to cable or satelite packages pay good money to be
able to watch TBS. I’m sure that most want to watch movies or shows free of
pop-up ads at the bottom. While I can see that these pop-up are there to
make people aware of other shows, the regular advertisements during
commercial breaks produce adequate awareness. Saturating television screens
over and over with ads, banners, pop-ups, etc just annoys most of your
audiance.
I do know that videos that are created for Internet use do not have these
annoying pop-ups. Most of these Internet videos are free for downloading and
many are quite entertaining. There are quite a few people who are extremely
annoyed at your advertising techniques. While most do not take the time to
write, they may be quite happy when they find alternative ways to get content
that your channels carry. Just be careful that you do not price and
advertise TBS out of a viewing audiance. I no longer have TNT, TBS, and
other Turner channels on my favorites list.
I encourage all those who read this post to also complain to Turner about this advertisement policy and also let them know that there are alternatives.
July 25th, 2006 at 5:50 am
The spam that contains embedded images are used to bypass spam filters and spammer attack programs. A new program is being created that will allow spam victims to fight back and punish spammers. This program is going to be called Spammer Skewer. It should be available as a beta early August this year.
July 25th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Hopefully it will be completely non centralized, otherwise the spammers will shut it down just like they did to Blue Frog.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Frog
July 25th, 2006 at 11:08 pm
Um where’s Russia? We’re supposed to believe that Russia isn’t in the top five? Likely story.
July 26th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
The SpammerSkewer client program will use a peer to peer networking protocol to redistribute cryptographically signed instruction files. These instruction files tell the SpammerSkewer client how to complain on the spamvertised website. The only point that is vulnerable to attack will be the website from which this program can be downloaded. By the time the peer network is seeded and enough publicity is reached, I will also distribute the program via peer to peer networks such as gnutella.
I wanted to have the program done at the first of August, but the imbedded image tactic used by spammers is causing me to have to add code that will allow manual complaint submission as well. I am including this feature so that not only will people be able to automatically drag and drop text based spam, but will also be able to submit complaints for fax, sms, blog, and other types of spam. By resorting to new tactics such as image embedding, spammers have only forced me to increase the the types of spam that will generate complaints. Computer programs may not be able to read many types of embedded images, but people viewing these images will be able to pick out a spamvertised site from a list. Each time a spamvertised site is selected from this list, an individual complaint will be generated. I understand that there is a possibility for spam victims to resort to sending multiple complaints for each spam, but this is unavoidable since spammers have forced me to add this list selection feature. It is my hope that spam victims take the high road and submit only one complaint to the appropriate site for each spam received.
July 27th, 2006 at 12:01 am
you obviously are not in the IT world
July 27th, 2006 at 12:05 am
Thank you.
July 27th, 2006 at 12:16 am
Being in the IT field you have probably seen a program called Spybot Search & Destroy. If you haven’t Google them and learn about them. They had a big problem about a year or so ago by being hacked. They had ‘fixed’ mirror sites stationed around the world for people to download updates on. Now they move those site around…ALOT…to keep the hackers from stopping the updates. They also have sites like the CNET network offer their program for download. If you make your program downloadable from a LOT of sources and move your mirror sites around like SbS&D does you should have no problems. I do believe, however, that you should have kept mum about your anti-spam program until it hit the market. You just let ‘them’ know you’re coming after them, therefore warning them of your presence. Remember, “To be forwarned is to be fore ARMED!”
July 27th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
He’s baaaaaack!!!
July 29th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
Hey, JON, this is an instance where you DO need to delete that thing!