http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/indonesia-one-of-worlds-biggest-sources-of-spam-mail/475915 Indonesia Among 'Dirty Dozen' Countries for Spam Ismira Lutfia | November 03, 2011
Indonesia ranks eighth in the group of countries dubbed the “dirty dozen” for relaying spam messages, an information technology security company says. The research findings, conducted by Sophos, a Singapore-based IT security and data protection company, were announced on Wednesday and based on a survey conducted between July and September. The United States was at the top of the list followed by a number of Asian nations, including South Korea, India, Vietnam and Indonesia. During this quarter, Indonesia accounted for 3.3 percent of all the spam e-mails sent out worldwide. Altogether, the Asian countries on the list were responsible for 50.1 percent of spam, up from 30 percent during the same period last year. Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, said in a statement that the vast majority of the world’s spam e-mails were distributed by botnets, networks of infected machines that operate under the control of spammers. “The spam that attempts to smash its way into users’ e-mail accounts can vary from being annoying adverts to downright malicious attacks,” Cluley said. “In the worst cases, a spam message might be designed to infect your computer with a Trojan horse or phish your banking credentials.” Typical methods of infection include clicking on links or attachments in spam messages. “If you receive spam messages, check any filter settings you may have and make sure your security software is running and has the latest patches installed,” Cluley said. “Don’t ever be tempted to buy anything via spam, as that’s what makes it worthwhile for the spammers. Don’t even open unsolicited e-mails as that alone could lead to malware infection — send them straight to the trash.” He also said a lack of protection against malware was to blame for the number of computers getting infected and coming under the control of spammers. “These latest statistics suggest that, as more people get online in Asia, they are not taking the right measures to protect their computers from infection, which results in the growth of botnets,” he said. Sophos warned that the problem of spam was not limited to traditional e-mail, saying social networking services were also exploited by fraudsters to spread money-making surveys via spammed-out messages. Botnets are also used by cybercriminals to launch distributed denial of service attacks, where thousands of so-called “zombie computers” are used to connect to a specific Web site, forcing it offline as it struggles to cope with the massive increase in traffic. The top 12 spam-relaying countries for July to September 2011: 1.United States11.3% 2.South Korea9.6% 3.India8.8% 4.Russia7.9% 5.Brazil5.7% 6.Taiwan3.8% 7.Vietnam3.5% 8.Indonesia3.3% 9.Ukraine3.1% 10.Romania2.8% 11. Pakistan2.0% [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
