India revealed as the new king of spam

India revealed as the new king of spam
India now on the spam map

The US has been ousted as the country that delivers the most spam to the world, with India taking its place.

According to new research by Sophos, India has managed to top the charts for being the biggest global contributor of junk messages, while the UK has fallen off the list entirely.

In all, Sophos has outlined the 'dirty dozen' – 12 countries that contribute the most spam. In 2011, the UK resided at sixth but now it is nowhere to be seen.

This is a list that's normally topped by the US but India is now in first place, accounting for 9.3 per cent of all spam compared to the US's 8.3 per cent.

South Korea is in third place but the drop is significant, with just 5.7 per cent of spam coming from the country.

Both Indonesia and Russia are in fourth place, with 5 per cent of all spam.

Zombie nation

Speaking about the results, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said: "While traditional marketing spam may appear to be no more than an annoyance, offering pills that have questionable claims or to get you rich quick, they can often to lead to more serious threats to your personal information.

"The latest stats show that, as more first-time internet users get online in growing economies, they are not taking measures to block the malware infections that turn their PCs into spam-spewing zombies."

In all, Asia is the biggest spewer of spam: the continent houses 46.7 per cent of all digital junk mail, followed by Europe at 26.9 per cent.

The UK's spam output has significantly decreased over the past year, with Britain offloading 47 per cent less spam than it did in 2011.

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.