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The amount of spam, unsolicited email advertisements,
originating from China dropped dramatically in the first three
months of the year, according to a US IT security firm.
In the period from January to March, China accounted for 7.5 percent
of all worldwide spam, Boston-based Sophos said in a statement. This
compared with 21.9 percent in the year-earlier period, according to
previous Sophos data.
"China, who until recently was an intimate rival to the US,
dropped dramatically during the last quarter," said Carole
Theriault, a senior security consultant at Sophos.
No immediate explanation was provided in the statement as to why
spam had declined from China, otherwise seen as a spam superpower.
However Internet communications from China and elsewhere in Asia
have only recently recovered from damage to undersea cables caused
by an earthquake near Taiwan last December.
Despite the decline, China maintained its position as the world's
number two spammer after the United States.
American spammers produced 19.8 percent of the world's junk e-mail
in the first quarter of 2007, down from 23.1 percent in the first
quarter of 2006.
Almost 70 percent of all emails in Asia are spam, anti-virus firm
Symantec Corp said last month.
Symantec reported then that 37 percent of all spam detected from the
Asia-Pacific came from China.
--AFP
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