United States of Spamerica
Over 60 percent of all e-mails sent to Irish inboxes during April were unsolicited, according to new figures released on Thursday.
Web hosting and monitoring firm IE Internet, which intercepts thousands of e-mails everyday, said 61.94 percent of e-mails during the month contained spam, down by more than 2 percent on the preceding month.
IE Internet's statistics are based on monitoring over 35,000 Irish businesses.
"Our latest figures show that the United States and Korea were the main source of Ireland's spam problem last month", said Phelim O'Connell, managing director with the firm.
Korea was responsible for almost 23 percent of all the spam sent to firms, second only to the US, which was the source of 24 percent of unsolicited e-mails.
IE Internet said that although Korea has a much smaller population than the US, it does boast high broadband penetration which makes it an attractive target for criminal spam gangs.
China was responsible for just under 16 percent of unsolicited e-mails sent during April, while Hong Kong and Mexico were guilty of 7 percent and 6 percent of dodgy mails respectively.
According to IE Internet, the virus rate remained low at just over 6 percent in April, down slightly on figures for March.
In terms of types of viruses doing the rounds, Warezov proved to be the most virulent. The worm, which spreads as an attachment and can terminate antivirus and firewall programs, and download other malware once launched, was responsible for nearly 15 percent of infections.
Other viruses carrying deadly payloads last month included variants of Mytob, Zafi.B and Sality.
Reproduced from an article published by ElectricNews.net
© ElectricNews.net
The original article can be viewed here:
http://www.electricnews.net/news.html?code=10051405
Permalink Bookmark Digg this story
