India struggles with US spam invasion

India's rapid adoption of new technology has left its PC users struggling to cope with very high levels of spam, according to a report released on Wednesday.

Ninety-one per cent of email traffic sent to Indian PC users is spam, according to email security company MessageLabs, which warned that the rate of technological advancement has outstripped growth in security awareness.

Paul Wood, security analyst at MessageLabs, said: "There is booming technology in India but it has been suggested there is little thought for security, which creates a market to exploit that."

The majority of junk email still comes from the US, or is generated by US spammers who have moved their operations abroad, said MessageLabs.

Wood said: "American companies use host services in other countries with laxer spam laws - perhaps a server farm in South America or an ISP in China. Communications between the spammer and the server can be encrypted, so the provider may not know what the server is being used for."

The MessageLabs Intelligence Report for February also found the United Arab Emirates had the highest rate of viruses transmission, with one virus received per 13.9 emails.

Wood said: "This could be collateral damage of a large viral outbreak local to the region."

Tom Espiner writes for ZDNet UK