U.S. tops world's spamming countries

Australia has dropped off the 2006 "dirty dozen" spam list completely. The dirty dozen spam list is a snapshot of countries found to be contributing to the worldwide level of spam in the third quarter of 2006 compiled by Sophos.

In the quarter Australia had fallen from number 25 to 32 in a global ranking of countries known for sending spam.

The ranking means Australia contributes 0.4 percent to the rate of global spam. The U.S. was found to contribute 21 percent topping the list. China, including Hong Kong at 13.4 percent, France at 6.3 percent (a tie with South Korea) and new entry Israel at 1.8 percent rounded out the list.

Poland contributed 4.8 percent, Brazil 4.7 percent, Italy 4.3 and Germany 3 percent.

The only comparison Australia had globally was Malaysia, who according to the Sophos ASEAN league table ranked globally at number 31 with 0.4 percent.

Paul Ducklin, Sophos Asia Pacific head of technology said not too much can be read into the drop in spam relaying in Australia. Ducklin said Australia is down and staying down and in such a table should be glad the country is near the bottom in an increasingly global issue.

"Whether Australia is 28th or 23rd doesn't matter as what is good is that we have not seen anything even looking like a resurgence in spam relaying machines - there does not seem to be more computers infected by zombies this year," Ducklin said.

"The big deal is if we had gone back up and of course one thing driving other countries up the spam list is the more the population is connected online as spam is increasingly becoming a global problem.

"If you compare the economies and population of Japan and Australia, and the fact perhaps spam is newer in Japan, we are not doing to badly when you consider the Internet penetration and population size in Australia."

Japan was found to contribute some 1.7 percent to global spam levels, according to the report, ranking them number 12 on the list.

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