Mapping spam

Filed in archive Spam on March 21, 2007

We already know how many spammers there are, and now Discover shows us where there are hiding.

Discover Magazine posted a nice map of spam hotspots, which was made by pinpointing origin of over 1 billion spam emails. The most of it comes from the US, which might surprise you. But the sad truth is that we are perhaps the most computer-stupid nation, since most of the spam comes from zombie computers:

"About 74.4 percent of all spam came from Internet addresses in the United States. Why? Spammers infect unprotected personal computers with viruses to do their dirty work. More computers with high-speed Internet connections mean more raw material for spammers. Criminals link hijacked personal computers together to form botnets-clusters of infected PCs that spammers can control from anywhere in the world."

Which of course wouldn't happen if people paid attention and installed an anti-virus on their computers.

As Discover put it, we are in fact spamming ourselves.