A lot of people understand the problem of internet security, but don’t always appreciate the fact that one of the most popular ways such pieces of malicious code is spread, is via spam email. And in most anti-virus reviews from the big computer security companies, the research into spam levels is exhaustive.

And one of the main pre-occupations, is identifying which are the most ‘spammed’ countries.

In a recent internet security report, a part of a larger anti-virus review, it was revealed that the country which suffers the most from spam is Hungary, which registered a whopping 94.8%.

In other words, nearly all of the emails sent in Hungary were spam.

Such emails have basically two purposes, to either spread viruses as a download, or link to a malicious website, or to elicit some action from the receiver for nefarious reasons.

So who’s next in the league of most spammed countries?

Perhaps one which would not be people’s obvious choice: it was Denmark which is said to have reached the 92.1% mark.

And close on the heels of Denmark is China with 91.2%, followed by its close neighbour Hong Kong with 91%.

After Hong Kong in this unfortunate table of shame comes Germany at 90.7% and then the Netherlands, with 90.2%, followed by giant America, with 90% of spam.

Under the 90% bar comes Australia with 88.5%, the UK at 88.2% and Canada at 88%. Dipping into still lower territory are Singapore with 86.8% and 86.6% in Japan.

These figures are released on a monthly basis and even though one month one country might have more spam than others, the worrying trend is that most countries have to cope with an inordinate amount of pointless emailing. Imagine for one moment if 90% of emails were taken out of the system? That’s nine out of every ten emails sent, or, to make a bigger comparison, for every million emails currently being sent, only 100,000 are not spam.

This is why the internet security industry is so pre-occupied with spammers and their various ways of populating the world’s networks with their pointless emails.

Guest Article by Neil Camp