It’s not like spam is going away anytime soon, but in a surprising development reported by eSecurity Planet, the U.S. has dropped to the number two spot as the world’s top spammer in stats compiled by Cisco.
While U.S.-originated spam volumes are on the decline, Cisco’s State of the Internet 2009 security report highlighted a growing rise in attacks emanating from social media outlets.
“I’m not completely surprised to see U.S falling to number two in the spam stats, but I didn’t expect it to happen yet,” said Cisco Fellow Patrick Peterson. “I was really gratified to see the actual spam volume decrease, not just ranking, but we [also] decreased the amount of spam that is pouring out of the United States.”
Cisco reported 6.6 trillion spam messages originating from the United States in 2009, a 20.3 percent decline from the 2008 mark of 8.3 trillion messages. This year, the United States was eclipsed by Brazil, which took the dubious distinction of the top spamming nation, blasting out 7.7 trillion messages in 2009, up 193 percent from 2008, when Cisco counted 2.7 trillion spam messages originating from Brazil.