The wave of spam is ever increasing, and now accounts for nearly three-quarters of the world`s e-mail.
According to a Sophos report on the origins of spam, the US remains by far the main propagator, accounting for 42.11%.
Coming in second on the list with 13.43% is South Korea, the most broadband-connected country in the world, followed by China (8.44%) and Canada (5.71%). France was the main spam propagator in Europe, although it accounted for only 1.37% of the world`s total.
SA` contribution to spam was minimal, and at present is not a noteworthy participant in the global arena, says Brett Myroff, CEO of local Sophos distributor NetXactics.
One alarming trend to emerge from the survey was the increasing number of zombie computers -PCs that have been compromised remotely by hackers or virus writers - being used to proliferate spam, says Myroff.
"Spammers are motivated by one thing - fast and easy money. Many spammers have taken their money-making schemes to the extreme by hacking into innocent third-party computers in an effort to do their dirty work.
Many home users` computers are sending out spam because they have had their broadband Internet connections exploited by remote hackers. Zombie computers are sending out over 40% of the world`s spam, usually to the complete ignorance of the PC`s owner."
In its data security summary for 2004, security vendor F-Secure claims to have evidence suggesting that some spammers have successfully recruited individual employees from anti-spam software developers.
"People who design anti-spam software would be the best experts to figure out how to make spam messages get through anti-spam filters. Spammers are also known to hire linguistics to assist them in developing spam e-mails that better evade anti-spam traps," the statement read.
Who`s winning the war?
The fact that America remains the main spam propagator clearly indicates that the country`s current anti-spam legislation is ineffectual, says Myroff.
"When Sophos first reported on the top spamming countries back in February 2004, the USA had the excuse that the CAN-SPAM Act had only been in existence for a couple of months. Almost a year and millions of spam messages later, it is quite evident that that the CAN-SPAM legislation has made very little headway in damming the flood of spam."
In its summary, F-secure says the CAN-SPAM Act would be "similar to passing a law that would make it OK to steal money as long as you`re being nice about it."
In a bid to counteract spam, Lycos Europe launched its anti-spam screensaver, designed to increase bandwidth costs for spammers. But after receiving more than 90 000 downloads, and successfully shutting down two Web sites in China, the company removed its screensaver, citing hosting and management issues.
Microsoft`s anti-spam proposal, Sender ID, was also turned down, due to patent and intellectual property concerns.
F-secure says the spam problem is likely to worsen before it improves. "The situation is getting worse and worse. Around 70% of all e-mail is spam nowadays."
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