United States Dethroned: Brazil Reigns as World's Spam Capital
Forbes reports today that Brazil has now overtaken China as the spam capital of the world. A report issued by Cisco's security division says that more than 7.7 trillion spam messages came out of Brazil last year, nearly triple their 2008 total. The U.S. took home the spam silver, with about 6.6 trillion messages, a marked decrease from their 8.3 trillion mark set in 2008. The good news is that China's spam production has seen a steep decline. Coming in at a distant 7th, The People's Republic was only responsible for 2.4 trillion spam e-mails, a full 25-percent drop from 2008.
It seems that these kinds of spam spikes are par for the course with many emerging economies. As countries like India, China, and Brazil have expanded broadband access to wider swaths of the population, online security measures haven't been able to keep pace. And to be fair, it's not entirely Brazil's fault. Global cyber criminals see any fast-growing nation as particularly vulnerable to online attacks, so it's likely that most Brazilian spam originates elsewhere and only finds easy residence in the country's porous networks.
All this to say, then, that as emerging markets like Brazil and India continue to blossom, it looks like we'll all have to put up with a little extra spam. Global spam stats were up pretty significantly from last year: November 2009 saw an average of 250 billion spam messages per day, compared with 100 billion in November of last year. While it may not be as high on the global agenda as, say, managing CO2 emissions from mid-level developing countries, it's still kinda troubling. [From: Forbes]
[Editor's Note: The story title should've read 'United States Dethroned,' not 'Nigeria Dethroned.']
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
RemDX said 3:29PM on 12-09-2009
So how does Nigeria even fit into this? Or do you just feel like trash talking a country?
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hello asca said 5:35PM on 12-09-2009
As a citizen of the United states i would like to congratulate Brazil lol
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e cigarettes said 5:21PM on 12-10-2009
Dude that is crazy... I friggin hate that stuff!
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Follier said 11:52AM on 12-11-2009
Although this makes it seem like the spammers are Brazilian (which they may be), but actually the spam is coming FROM Brazil, which is different.
Let me help.
1) Nearly all spam is sent by bots.
2) Bots are infected PCs.
3) PCs get infected when people click on damn near anything on the internet without protection.
4) PCs without protection are rampant in emerging markets.
5) Brazil is an emerging market with nigh-unprecedented geographic internet penetration (comparable to Australia) resulting in a booming number of new hacked/unprotected PCs online each moment.
Inevitable result = Brazil becomes big 'ol botnet.
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Stormwatch said 4:49PM on 12-11-2009
Well, what did you expect. Everyone runs Windows around here!
Get a decent operating system, bando de filho de puta sem costume!
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bath mate said 4:23PM on 12-30-2009
As always an excellent posting.The
way you write is awesome.Thanks. Adding more information will be more useful.
Bathmate
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