The February State of Spam Reporthighlights an interesting trend in the shift of spam moving from NorthAmerica to EMEA. The percentage of spam originating from EMEA hassurpassed that of North America, which represents a significant shiftin where the bulk of the world’s spam is “supposedly” sent from.
This trend has been observed for the past three months with aculmination in January of approximately 44% of all spam email noworiginating from Europe, versus 35.1% from North America. But is thisspam mail really originating in Europe? Although it appears that waythe very nature of spam distribution makes it difficult to accuratelypinpoint the true geographic origin the sender. Spammers often takeadvantage of tricks that allow them to mask their real location andbypass DNS block lists.
Why the increase in spam originating from Europe? One theory pointsto increased broadband usage. The past few years have seen a massivegrowth in broadband users in Europe. As of June 2007, Europe had six ofthe top ten countries for broadband users in the world. This massivegrowth in broadband users does appear to correlate to the sizeableincrease in spam originating from Europe.
More information regarding this trend as well as highlights on other recent trends can be found in the February State of Spam Report.