US loses ‘Spam King' crown to India this year

[email protected] (Gulf News )
April 27, 2012

Gulf


Dubai, April 27: The United States has lost its crown as the "Spam King" to India in the first quarter of the year, security firm Sophos said in a report.


"The volume of email spam that originated from India exceeded the volume coming from the US and transformed the Asian country into the world's top spam source," Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, said in its latest Dirty Dozen report.


“ The volume of email spam that originated from India exceeded the volume coming from the US and transformed the Asian country into the world's top spam source”

Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos


The US, which has been the traditional leader of the list, came in second after India followed by South Korea with Indonesia in third place along with Russia.


Mumbai-based internet security specialist Vijay Mukhi said spammers could act with impunity due to poor enforcement of laws.


"We have an Information Technology Act that was introduced in 2000. But we don't have any convictions under it and it's silent on spam," he told Gulf News.


Though India has laws aimed at tackling cybercrime, he said many internet users feel it is not used effectively. Even when arrests are made, very few people are actually convicted.


Free rein

He said police had arrested six Nigerian nationals suspected of defrauding hundreds of people using text message and email scams in January. Scam victims were duped after being told they had won a lottery.


Darya Gudhova, a spam analyst at Kaspersky, a company which designs anti-virus software, said a lack of security awareness had given spammers free rein. She said there was a growing level of cybercrime activity in developing regions such as Asia and Latin America.


Sophos' Cluley said the vast majority of spam was sent by computers infected with some type of malware. He added: "If you have a spam in your inbox, there's an almost one in ten chance that it was relayed from an Indian computer."


He said the overall throughput of global email spam messages had decreased during the first three months of 2012 compared to the same period in 2011.


This is because of anti-spam actions taken by ISPs, but also because spammers have started favouring social networks.


Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
March 25,2020

Hubei, Mar 25: As a bus departed from its terminus at Hankou Railway Station at 5:25 am Wednesday morning, Wuhan started to resume bus service after nine weeks of lockdown.

Apart from a driver, a safety supervisor was also on each bus, whose duty was to make sure all passengers are healthy.
"For those who do not use smartphones, they should bring with them a health certificate issued by the health authorities," said Zhou Jingjing, a safety supervisor aboard bus No. 511 departing from the Wuchang Railway Station complex.
The once hardest-hit city in central China's Hubei Province during the COVID-19 outbreak took unprecedented traffic restrictions on Jan 23. All of its public transport and all outbound flights and trains had been suspended in an attempt to contain the virus within the region.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
May 18,2020

Beijing, May 18: China has reported 25 new COVID-19 patients, the health authorities said on Monday, as 14 asymptomatic cases were detected in Wuhan, the first epicentre of the coronavirus where officials are doing mass testing of the city's entire 11 million population, taking the number of such cases in the city to 337, the highest in the country.

The death toll in China remained at 4,634 on Sunday with no new fatalities reported.

China's National Health Commission (NHC) reported seven new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 18 asymptomatic cases on Sunday.

Jilin province where the government has implemented strict control measures in the last few days following reports of clusters of cases in Jilin city reported two cases on Sunday, while Shanghai city has reported one.

As of Sunday, the overall confirmed cases in China had reached 82,954, including 82 patients who are still being treated, and 78,238 people who have been discharged after recovery.

Also on Sunday, 18 new asymptomatic cases including two from abroad were reported in China, taking the total number under medical observation to 448, the NHC said.

Asymptomatic cases pose a problem as the patients are tested COVID-19 positive but develop no symptoms such as fever, cough or sore throat. However, they pose a risk of spreading the disease to others.

Wuhan which is undergoing mass testing of the city's entire over 11 million population to determine the prevalence of the virus has reported no new confirmed cases, but 14 new asymptomatic infections, taking the number of such cases in the city to 337, the highest in the country, according to the figures released by the local health commission on Sunday.

The death toll in Hubei province stood at 4,512, including 3,869 in Wuhan.

The province so far has reported 68,134 confirmed COVID-19 cases in total, including 50,339 in Wuhan, according to the officials figures.

As the cases dropped, China on Sunday exempted people in Beijing from wearing masks, signalling that the virus is under control in the national capital.

As the virus is abating in the country, China is opening up all its business including entertainment centres like Shanghai Disneyl and to show that it has managed to control the dreaded virus while the world is struggling with it with lockdowns and massive casualties.

The novel coronavirus which originated in Wuhan in December last year has claimed 315,185 lives and infected over 4.7 million people globally, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
July 2,2020

Geneva, Jul 2: The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated the overall number of coronavirus cases globally at 10,357,662, with 508,055 people having died from the disease.

The UN health agency said in the situation report published on late Wednesday that 163,939 new cases had been recorded in the past day, while further 4,188 patients had died.

Americas continue to lead the count with over 5.2 million cases, followed by Europe with more than 2.7 million.

The WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.