Which countries top the new Dirty Dozen spam list?

SophosLabs tracks huge volumes of spam from around the world, and once in a while we pause to take a look at the countries sending the most spam  – we call it our Dirty Dozen Spampionship.

In the results for the most recent quarter (January, February and March 2015), we found that the biggest spam-relaying country in the world is the United States, once again. Vietnam has climbed to number two, followed by Ukraine, Russia, South Korea, and China rounding out the top six.

Check out the rest of the list and you see some familiar places and some countries that come and go from the Dirty Dozen:

Measured per capita, though, and even a small country like Moldova can end up on top. Moldova hasn’t been in the Dirty Dozen before, but this time, spam coming from hosting providers’ servers, coupled with the more usual problem of zombie malware on home computers, have propelled the country to the number one spot.

 The rest of the dirty dozen measured by population is shown here:

So what does this mean? Cybercriminals have figured out that it’s harder to stop spam from a vast number of computers that have been infected by their malware. That’s why we see spam from all over the world.

All spam-sending computers are dangerous, and to stop spam we need to clean up the malware that makes it such a big problem. To scan your computer for malware, download our Free Virus Removal Tool.

For more about spam, and how to make sure you’re protected, check out these articles and podcasts:

• How bots and zombies work and why you should care
• How to send 5 million spam emails without even noticing
• Snowshoe spam and what can be done about it