Symantec Ranks Idaho as No. 1 Spam-Affected US State

According to Symantec's MessageLabs, Idaho (US) is now characterized as a state receiving maximum number of spam messages that amounts to 93.8% of its total e-mail traffic, exceeding the global spam rate of 86.4% for September 2009, reported darkreading.com on September 24, 2009.

Such an increase in spam level is quite dramatic because Idaho stood at the 44th position in spam volumes in 2008. A security expert commented that although science and technology ranks among Idaho's big businesses, the state might not be fortunate enough when it comes to spam.

In the meantime, when Paul Wood, Senior Analyst, Symantec's MessageLabs Group, was asked to comment on such a jump made by Idaho, he said that he didn't know as to what exactly happened within the state, reported pcworld.com on September 24, 2009.

Kentucky, New Jersey, Alabama and Illinois are the other US states being highly affected by mounting spam levels. On the other hand, Montana, Kansas, Alaska and South Dakota are at present the least spam-affected states in the US. The US state with the lowest spam level of 83.1% is Puerto Rico.

Wood explained the reasons for such disturbing magnitude of spam in different US states. He said that one of the reasons is Internet advancements, including high acceptance of social networking; and the second reason is the global economic downturn that crept in towards end of 2008, reported darkreading.com on September 24, 2009.

He also said that for their own purpose, spammers have taken undue advantage of the economic uncertainty. Even if we keep the economic slump factor aside, the spammers are continuously exploiting the trustworthiness of a lot of netizens. Spammers' toolkit principally includes automated tools, botnets and targeted spam campaigns. Further, the aforementioned techniques are constantly evolving in order to combat the efforts to stop them. Thus, it can be concluded that no single state is immune to the impacts of spam.

At last, whatever may be the reason attributed to the surging levels of spam, the fact is that the US is still the leading nation in terms of spam volumes.

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» SPAMfighter News - 10/16/2009