India sends fourth highest spam mails globally

New Delhi: India ranked fourth in the list of countries sending out spam e-mails with malicious content like ads for pharma products and sexually explicit material, a Microsoft report has said.

The US topped the list of countries having sent maximum number of botnet spam during January-June 2013, followed by China, the UK and India, the survey said.

Cyber criminals distribute malicious software or malware that can turn a computer into a bot, also known as a zombie or robot, which makes the computer perform automated tasks over the Internet, without the PC owner’s knowledge.

“The countries and regions sending the most spam from botnets in H1 13 were the United States (29,216 IP addresses sending spam), China (16,094), the United Kingdom (7,728) and India (5,779)," Microsoft said in its Security Intelligence Report.

Determining the originating place of botnet spam can help governments and industry response teams better understand the magnitude of security problems affecting different areas of the globe, it added. India was also victim of a number of cybercrimes, ranking fifth in terms of malware encounters during January-June 2013.

“In India, the encounter rate increased slightly from 29.31 per cent in Q1 2013 to 29.44 per cent in Q2 2013. Autorun (encountered by 7.6 per cent of computers in India in 2Q13), Gamarue (4.7 per cent) and the virus family Win32/Sality (4.4 per cent) were among the most commonly encountered threats,” it said. Encounter rate refers to a percentage of computers running Microsoft real-time security products encountering malware during the said period.

The United States topped this list too, followed by Brazil, Russia and Turkey. Other countries in the list included Mexico, Germany, France, China and the United Kingdom.