New Delhi: When it comes to spewing spam India comes in second, behind the United States, in the list of the world's top spam relaying countries.
While the United States contributes 13.1 per cent of global spam, computers in India send out 7.3 per cent of all the junk messages distributed around the world.
Interestingly, China - often blamed for cybercrime by many countries - does not figure in the "dirty dozen".
The list for the period January to March 2010, compiled by IT security and control firm Sophos, puts China in the 15th position.
Brazil (6.8 per cent), South Korea (4.8 per cent) and Vietnam (3.4 per cent) fill in the third, fourth and fifth spots.
In another report released recently by web security firm Symantec, India was placed in the third position.
Spam accounts for 97 percent of all email received by business email servers, putting both a strain on resources and wasting a huge amount of time to lost productivity.
Used largely as a method for selling counterfeit or illicit goods such as fake pharmaceuticals, luxury watches and false diplomas, virtually all spam comes from malware infected computers (called bots, or zombies) that are controlled by 'botherder' cybercriminals.
Computer users can unwittingly allow their PCs to become part of a botnet in a number of ways, including clicking on malicious links that are frequently contained within the spam messages that the botnets are used to distribute.
The only way for users and administrators to reduce the risk of being compromised is to run anti-spam and anti-malware protection and ensure all software and hardware is up to date with security patches.
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