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United States Dethroned: Brazil Reigns as World's Spam Capital

by Amar Toor on December 9, 2009 at 01:50 PM

Brazil. The name alone evokes images of balmy beaches, bronzed bodies, or Bossa ballads. But beneath the veneer of this plastic surgery tropical paradise lurks an ugly, viral underbelly that's infecting the entire world. No, not that weird rash you noticed after Spring Break in Rio. We're talking spam.

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.']

Tags: brazil, china, cisco, email, safety, security, spam, top

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