MOSCOW, September 17 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s share in the world’s spam-email production rose almost 2 percentage points in August to 4.3 percent compared with July, moving the country to fifth place among the world’s biggest spammers, a Russian computer-security firm said Tuesday.
This is a significant change from the second-quarter report, which placed Russia ninth. In August, the world’s three largest spammers remained the same: China (21 percent), the United States (19 percent) and South Korea (15.4 percent), according to Kaspersky Lab, cited in a report by Digit.ru.
The three countries accounted for a total of 55 percent of the world’s spam, with Taiwan coming in fourth (5.5 percent).
The spam situation in the Russian section of the Internet, the Runet, changed greatly in August, the report said. However, Russia receives most incoming spam from Taiwan (13 percent), Vietnam (8.7 percent), India (7.7 percent) and the United States (7 percent), Kaspersky Lab was quoted as saying.
However, Russia has moved from seventh to second place regarding spam in the Runet, by accounting for 10 percent of that spam.
Two-thirds of global spam emails are short letters, smaller than a kilobyte, the firm said, adding that the share of letters with malware increased from 2.3 percent of all email traffic in July to 5.6 percent in August.
However, Kaspersky Lab’s figures do not compare to recent findings by The Spamhaus Project, an international nonprofit that tracks spam operations and lobbies governments for effective anti-spam legislation, its website says.
According to Spamhaus, as of September 17, Russia ranked third among countries producing and exporting spam, after the United States and China. Russia was followed by Ukraine, the organization said.
