Europe leapfrogs Asia as top spam-relaying continent

Sophos’s latest report into spam-relaying around the world has discovered that Europe has snatched the top spot from Asia, as the top continent for relaying spam emails.

With 35% of all spam intercepted by Sophos’s global network of spam traps coming via European computers, it’s way ahead of Asia and North America.

Now, it’s important to remember that in the vast majority of cases spammers don’t use their own computers to send out the spam that’s arriving in your inboxes. Instead, they take over botnets of compromised computers around the world (that have been infected with malware) and without the knowledge of their rightful owners, send out junk mail in the background.

These cybercriminals are motivated by money – and they don’t just use your hacked PC to spread spam, but also to steal your identity and bank account information, to launch denial-of-service attacks and to distribute malware to…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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