If there is a doubt that India has 120 million Internet users then a more indirect statistic should clear it. India has now pushed past the U.S. and South Korea to become the top spam-sending nation. 9.3% of all the junk mails in the world now travel through computers in India. When we say “travel through” the spam message might not be originating from India but servers from the country are being used as a stop-over.

8.3% of world’s spam travel through computers in the United States, and 5.7% go through South Korea’s computers. The statistics were released by security firm Sophos.

Sophos’ study acknowledges that spam coming out of India might not actually originated from the country. Someone from across the world might have taken control of the computers here, for sending junk emails to users around the world. A scary fact: each new Internet user can equate to new vulnerable computers.

India beating the U.S. in spam could mean one of two things: there are more Internet users in India or there are more computers in India which are more vulnerable than they are in the United States.

Now compare this with a recent report by Trend Micro, which claimed India as the top spam sending nation for Q1 2012. As much as 20% of the spam comes out from India followed by 13% from Indonesia, 12% from South Korea and 10% from Russia, says Trend Micro.

The report is only for a quarter, but the numbers are radically different from the Sophos report, and so are the claims. Either way there’s no denying that India is a country sending junk mails en masse. The question of by how much really doesn’t matter.

Spam and Social networks

Looks like the spam count isn’t just for emails anymore. It takes the social media spam also into account. Facebook, Twitter and the new darling Pinterest are now popular hangouts for spammers.

I have noticed one thing, though. All the email forwards that I used to get have now stopped. They have all moved to Facebook, Google+ and other social networks!

Via