Sophos: Indonesia Ranked Fourth on Spam Sender

Once again, I must reveal an ugly truth. After writing about Indonesia having the slowest internet speed among 50 countries surveyed by Google, I must talk about another bad news about Indonesia. Indonesia is ranked fourth in the list of countries that send the most spam. During January to March 2012, from 100 spam spread around the world, 5 of them shipped from Indonesia.

Indonesia’s rank goes up compared to last year’s third quarter. At that time, Indonesia was ranked eighth with contributing percentage of 3.3%.

The fact is revealed in the research by Sophos, a company involving in data security and protection. In the first quarter of 2012, Indonesia together with Russia ranked fourth in spam contribution of 5%. First rank is India with contribution of 9.3% followed by the United States contributing 8.3% over spam all over the world. Below is the complete list:

1. India 9.3%
2. United States 8.3%
3. South Korea 5.7%
4. Indonesia and Russia 5.0%
5. Italy 4.9%
6. Brazil 4.3%
7. Poland 3.9%
8. Pakistan 3.3%
9. Vietnam 3.2%
10. Taiwan 2.9%
11. Peru 2.5%
12. Other Countries 41.7%

However, that doesn’t mean that the spam is necessarily sent by Indonesian. Sophos’ research also reveals that most of the spam originated from a hacked computer. India takes over the first place from United States because the beginner internet user in this country is increasing rapidly. Most of those beginner users are not using the computer safely. Internet service provider in that country is not also doing anything serious to prevent the spam.

Well, I’m sure readers of DailySocial are not included in the spammers that made Indonesia ranked fourth on that list. But your computer could be one of the spam senders because it’s hacked by hacker. This could happen if your computer does not have adequate security systems to prevent hackers from controlling your computer.

In the research, Sophos also revealed several ways that can be taken to reduce this spam attack, either by companies or individuals. Companies should have the right internet policy to prevent spam. Among them is to make sure the company’s anti-virus is updated properly. Each company also must have a comprehensive solution inside the email and web gateway system to defend against the threat of spam and viruses. While for individual users, beware of links you click and the software that you install. Also, make sure your antivirus is updated to prevent the malware and virus sent by hackers trying to take control of your computer.

Hopefully, the news of Sophos’ research in the next quarter will be a good one where Indonesia manage to go down of its current rank on the list.