Sophos: Indonesia is 8th on the Top 10 Spam-Relaying Countries

It's not exactly good news, but it's better for everyone to know and be aware about it. The IT security and data protection company, Sophos, recently published its finding on spam-relaying countries in the world. Although the US is still the country with the largest number of spammers in the world, Asian countries also “succeeded” to be in the top ten of spam-relaying country. Unfortunately, Indonesia is included in it. Indonesia is 8th with 3.3% of spammers in the world.

On the list are other Asian countries including South Korea, India, Taiwan, and Vietnam which are regarded as developed countries as far as internet penetration and IT infrastructure are concerned. In fact, South Korea is one of the countries with the largest broadband penetration in the world. In Q3 2010, Asia was “only” responsible for 30% spam in the world, but now in Q3 2011, 50% of spam is from Asia.

According to Sophos, most of the spam emails were distributed by using botnets. A botnet is a network consisting of infected computers (zombie) controlled by spammers. Infection commonly happens if the user clicks the links or attachments in the spam email. It will be easier if the victims’ computer do not have updated antivirus.

Lately, I often receive emails from my friends whose email account was hacked without the owner’s recognition. The email account sent spam emails containing dangerous links. Unfortunately, most of people are unaware of this condition so that we should pro-actively share about this problem to others.

On the other hand, Indonesia's position on the list shows that Indonesian Internet users are beginning to understand more about Internet and its dangers, and in some cases tend to be more adept than Internet users in other countries. Unfortunately some of the more advanced users seem to be using the Internet for nefarious purposes instead of educating others.