One of the great things about Internet security companies is that they love to send out little factoids about which country is currently screwing over all the other countries. This week it was Sophos that sent out a release detailing the breakdown of spam-relaying countries, adjusted for population.
It turns out that on a per-capita basis, The Pitcairn Islands emits more spam than any other nation. At number two is Niue, and eight other nations that you probably couldn’t find on a map round out the top ten.
The breakdown goes as follows:
1. The Pitcairn Islands
2. Niue
3. Tokelau
4. Anguilla
5. The Faroe Islands
6. Monaco
7. Bermuda
8. Falkland Islands
9. Andora
10. Aruba
Now, we’re not entirely sure what any of this proves. Does it mean that people in these obscure countries have computers that are less secure and more susceptible to spam bots than other countries? That seems pretty unlikely. Or is it simply that these counties offer a safe haven for spammers?
Of course, in terms of overall spam (not adjusted for population), the US is still head and shoulders above the rest. Australia, for what it’s worth, is the 33rd spammingest nation on the planet (and 85th when population is factored in).
Richard StClair
Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 3:10 AMNiue has a mere 256K return (outbound) connection to the Internet backbone, through Australia. The South Pacific is among the most expensive places in the world to buy bandwidth. And with 1,000 or so inhabitants left in Niue sharing that 256k outbound connection, there would not be much spam coming out of Niue even if they tried.
There simply is not enough bandwidth to cause substantial notice to the Internet community with such traffic.
So I would have no idea how anybody would come up with any facts whatsoever which would rank or even associated Niue as the number two spot in the world for spam. It’s just silly.
I would call it an abuse of the term “per capita”, poor journalism and misuse of information (and I’m being polite here).
Phill Hardstaff
Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 7:15 AMYou have got to be joking, the population of Pitcairn is something like 26 people !! SOPHOS are nuts. So if 50% of the Pitcairn population had PC’s and 50% of those were infected thats 6.5 people, what does this mean, nothing, thats what it means, get real.