Over at social shopping site StyleFeeder, Philip Jacob posted some stats about the geographic origins of spammy accounts. It turns out that the majority of the spam accounts created on StyleFeeder come from IP addresses in India.
This reminded me that we hadn’t posted a breakdown of badware websites by country in quite some time. So, without further ado, here’s the updated pie chart:
Probably the most remarkable thing about the update is how similar it is to the one we included in our report last summer (PDF). China’s share has come down just a bit, from 52% to 48% of the world’s share of badware sites, but otherwise the top countries are holding pretty steady. It will be interesting to watch over time to see if China’s adjustment is the start of a trend or just a statistical blip.
It’s interesting to note that, while StyleFeeder’s spam seems to come from client PCs in India, there are relatively few badware-delivering websites in that country. This could be a reflection of security-savvy web hosting providers in India or perhaps a relatively low rate of new sites being created by individuals and small businesses in that country.
Also interesting is the commentary that follows Mr. Jacob’s stats, in which he muses on the challenge of how to address the spam problem effectively without overblocking. I encourage you to read his entire post.
