Sophos’ quarterly “Dirty Dozen” spam report released on Thursday puts the United States as the number one source for spam in the third quarter of 2013. This list ranks spam senders, not spammers.What is the distinction you ask? To know that you need to understand how spam is sent.

Spammers don’t sed their own spam. Sending 20,000,000 emails from the same server, or data center, in a day will get you blacklisted. You may be able to get out a few hundred thousand before being caught but that,s about it. ISPs will not only block the rest of your emails, but they will probably make it impossible for you to send anything out for a few weeks. So what is a spammer to do? The average spammer is sending 20 emails from 1,000,000 computers using a botnet.

This means the majority of spam senders are completely unaware they are sending. They are infected with a bot. I point this out to emphasize Sopho’s very brilliant motto duringi Cyber Security Awareness Month:

If you don’t make an effort to clean up malware from your own computer, you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem

Which is also the reason Sophos publishes it’s “Dirty Dozen” report, not to accuse anyone but to raise awareness that we need to be vigilant.

In doing my part to help you be vigilant I have mad my book available in the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library for you to read.

Here is the Sophos’ official ranking: