85% of the emails in your inbox are spam

So you think your computer is safe, and that your efforts at securing it against spam are adequate? You will be surprised to know that over 85% of the emails circulating in India are spam!

India, it seems, is the second largest country in the world after the US in generating spam. The latest findings of a study by the computer security company Symantec called, State of Spam and Phishing, revealed that in August 2010, a staggering 91% of the emails circulated in India were spam. In other words, only a paltry 9% of the emails were genuine. India is thus second only to the US in generating spam.

Shantanu Ghosh, vice-president, Symantec, India product operations, told DNA that the number of computers and internet connections in India is increasing fast. "These computers have provided a vast playing area to the spammers," he said.

The Symantec study revealed that, overall, spam comprised 91.89% of all the messages sent in the country in July and that, on an average, the figure remains at around 85%.

Malware spam was the key virus circulated through spam. The study revealed that malware spam made up almost 12 percent of all the spam in June 2010. The study also indicated that phishing is on the rise in the country and phishing websites created by automated toolkits have increased by 123% since May 2010. "The spammers targeted internet-enabled computers in the country through these websites," Ghosh said.

The spam generators across the globe.

(Source: Symantec)