In a ranking put together by Sophos, world leader in protecting businesses against viruses, spyware and spam has made public its latest report covering spam messages worldwide over the second quarter of 2006. "Experts at SophosLabs™ scanned all spam messages received in the company's global network of spam traps, and have revealed that for the first time in more than two years, the United States has failed to make inroads into its spam-relaying problem. The US remains stuck at the top of the chart and is the source of 23.2 percent of the world's spam," claims Sophos. Prevalently, the majority of spam is relayed by compromised machines part of botnets, or zombie networks.

The survey shows that China (& Hong Kong), South Korea and France follow the US with 20%, 7.5% and 5.2% of the world's spam, but Sophos comments on the fact that security measures implemented in these countries have resulted in a decrease of the spam volume since the first quarter of 2006. "Since the introduction of the CAN-SPAM legislation in 2004, we've seen a regular quarter-on-quarter drop in the proportion of spam coming from the US - until now, that is," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "Given the number of arrests, and the huge fines dished out to guilty spammers, it's hard to criticise the US for failing to take action. Perhaps the reality is that the statistics can't be reduced any further unless US home users take action to secure their computers and put a halt to the zombie PC problem."

But if the US is the global spam leader, taking in account the sources of spam based on continent reveals that 40.2% of all spam originates in Asia, while Europe is in second place with 27.1% and North America is third with 25.7%.