14 DAY TRIAL // Out of all the countries in the world, the United States are the most affected by spam (say security companies like Sophos and ScanSafe), followed closely by China. MessageLabs, company that specializes in providing messaging and Internet security solutions, has recently put together a top 10 of the most spammed US states. According to previously mentioned company, Illinois takes the fist place in the top, while Alabama the last.
Matt Sergeant, Senior Anti-Spam Technologist with MessageLabs, comments: "The varying spam levels across states can be attributed to different socioeconomic factors and levels of security awareness in each state. The states that are experiencing higher spam levels may not place as high a priority on IT security overall or employees and businesses may be more willing to share their personal contact information in public domains. When email addresses are openly available, spammers take advantage of it and inundate those inboxes with massive amounts of spam."
MessageLabs has surveyed spam levels and come up with a top 10 where the first three positions are taken by Illinois (92.1%), South Dakota (90.9%), and Oregon (89.1%); the percentages refer to the amount of spam traffic detected in each state. For the entire US, in June, spam traffic averaged 86%.
The bottom three positions on the chart are taken by Texas (87.5%), Pennsylvania (87.1%) and Alabama (87%). New Hampshire, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Indiana also made it to the top ten, ranking in on places 4 to 7 respectively.
The US state that had the least amount of spam traffic is Montana (77%), says MessageLabs.
According to Matt Sargent, as spammers are coming up with new and more sophisticated ways of bypassing filters, spam traffic will continue to go up. "Spammers are relentless in their tactics for exploiting computer users," he says.