Spam from India targeted mostly at Europe

Nandagopal Rajan

Spam from India is primarily targeted at Europe where the country is among the top two sources of such emails, says Kaspersky Lab's Q3 spam report. While India is the second largest source of spam in Eastern Europe, in the western part of the continent Vietnam is also a major source of such unsolicited mails.

Overall, US and China account for over half of the world's spam. While spam originating in China was sent primarily to the Asia-Pacific region, Australia, and Western Europe, spam from US was targeted at the American continent, the Asia-Pacific region, and Australia.

The percentage of spam in total mail traffic was down by 2.8 percentage points in the third quarter, though it still accounted for 71.5 per cent of all mail sent. The share of emails with malicious attachments increased by 0.9 percentage points and amounted to 3.9 per cent. Kaspersky's experts attribute this fall in numbers to the increasing criminalisation of spam mail which was pushing advertisers of legitimate goods to other venues.

Interestingly, almost 27 per cent of phishing attacks were launched on social networks, followed by websites of financial organizations, accounting for 22 per cent.

The study found that there was a rise in politically themed spam mail during the presidential elections in the US. So, President Barack Obama's name was among the most misused, finding mention in a wide variety of spam mails. Incidentally, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 classifies only commercial mailings as spam and not mass political mailings.