What country do most spammers come from? Russia or Belarus?

[Torsten]

Hi,

According our site's statistics the vast majority of all spammers come from one single country: Russia (plus Ukraine and Belarus).

Why do you think is this? I have a theory that I'd like to share with you. I think in Russia has a decent IT infrastructure and a lot of young IT warriors who have fun sending mass mailings about Viagra pills, credit repair services and the latest get quick rich schemes.

Also, laws against spammers don't seem to exist in Russia. (I don't think that laws would make that much of a difference here anyway.)

Wouldn't be great if we somehow could use all this manpower for useful purposes?

This is probably a very simple explanation for the Russian spam phenomena and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Many thanks,
Torsten
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Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Jamie (K)]

The next question would be, "To which country is the most spam sent?" and the answer would probably be the United States.

Most spam used to be sent from the US, I understand, but spammers can be caught here, and the penalties can include pretty stiff prison sentences, so a lot of spamming operations have gone off shore. Some are in the Caribbean, and others are even in Africa. I think your theory as to why most of it comes from Russia is probably accurate. Fortunately, though, the ISPs' spam filters are getting more and more accurate.

[Torsten]

Yes Jamie, it probably makes sense for spammers to target email addresses in the US because Americans are Internet savvy and almost everybody has a credit card. What's more, Americans might be most likely to purchase goods and services online. However, as you pointed out in an earlier thread, you can easily detect spam messages because they often are written in bad English. Which leads me to think that spammers might be trying to target immigrants living in the US.

Maybe we should offer English writing courses to ESL spammers? By learning English they might also learn more about online business models and eventually they will give up spamming and start creating useful projects. Yes, it sounds as I'm being factitious but then again this might work. I'm sure that most spammers simply don't know how to use their skills to useful ends. If their English was better they would be able to learn more about business and understand that spamming is a waste of time and resources.
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[Jamie (K)]

Spammers, like most other criminals, do know how to use their skills to useful ends, but they don't want to, because it doesn't produce fast enough money. This kind of enterprise is fueled by greed, not lack of knowledge. Far from it.

[Torsten]

I agree, many spammers definitely possess useful skills and knowledge. However, I doubt they understand some fundamental principles of success.
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Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[prezbucky]

It's fueled in part by a lack of empathy -- these are mostly small-time sociopaths. (call it a mild form of sociopathy)
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