Five countries send 99 per cent of spam

Five countries are responsible for 99 per cent of spam email sent around the world, according to a study by anti-spam company Commtouch.

Commtouch analysed hundreds of millions of unsolicited emails and said about 55 per cent of spam messages originated in the US, while slightly more than 73 per cent of them referred recipients to websites hosted in China. China, South Korea, the US, Russia and Brazil host more than 99 per cent of all websites mentioned in spam, according to Commtouch.

Not surprisingly offers of drugs, particularly Viagra, accounted for about one-third of global spam messages sent in the first half of 2004. Pitches for drugs and medicines made up about 30 percent of spam. Mortgage/refinancing and "organ enlargement" ranked second and third with nine per cent and seven per cent respectively.

The adoption in the US of a federal anti-spam law, last year's Can-Spam act, has done little to deter spammers, Commtouch found. The number of unique spam outbreaks per day shot up to 500,000 by the end of June, from 350,000 at beginning of January.

By June, however, there was Can-Spam compliance among 10 percent of spam messages. The act requires that unsolicited email messages have a functioning return email address, provide a postal address and include an option to "unsubscribe". Messages must also carry a subject line that is not deceptive.

The analysis also brought to the fore the fact that most spam is written in English, with only 5.77 per cent in other languages.

Last week, a number of top internet providers sought technical guidelines to tackle the growing menace of spam.

Staff writers, Special to ZDNet Australia