IT security and control firm Sophos has ranked Singapore as the 22nd largest spam relaying country, but local authorities have been getting tough on spam since last year.
A new law introduced in 2007 requires Singapore businesses to label advertisements in all emails and SMS messages circulated within the island.
The United States, Russia and China were the top three spam relaying countries last year. They accounted for one-third of all global spam in the final quarter of last year.
But this year, these countries have improved and are no longer featured in the top ten list of spam-emitting countries.
Instead, the top three spots go to islands in the South Pacific – the Pitcairn Islands, Niue and Tokelau.
“Between October (and) December 2007, the US relayed far more spam than any other country due to the sheer number of computers in the country that had been taken over by remote hackers,” said Carole Theriault, a senior security consultant at Sophos.
She added: “But when measuring spam emitted per capita, the results are very different. Most of the countries in this chart have very small populations compared to the usual offenders, but their totals are sky high when it comes to spam emitted on a per-person basis.
“Just because your PC is located on a remote island in the South Pacific doesn’t mean it’s not contributing to the global spam problem. All computer users, wherever they are in the world, need to wake up to the threats and ensure their PCs are properly protected,” she added
I feel that the Singapore government can do more then just introducing the new law in 2007 that requires Singapore businesses to label advertisements in all emails and SMS messages circulated within the island.
In November 2003 the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) carried out a study and found that email spam caused Singapore users about $23 million in productivity loss. The study further revealed that each of the three major local internet service providers (or ISPs) received close to 5,000 spam-related complaints a month. The users interviewed perceived email spam as the second most important concern after computer viruses.
sources from Channelnewsasia
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Filed under: Economy, Media, Technology | Tagged: Advertistments, Control, Infocomm, Internet, IT, Media, Rank, Singapore, Spam, Spam relaying Country, Technology
