Hong Kong Is World's Spam Capital

If you are a Hong Kong local bragging about the city's laser speed broadband connection, then shame on you. While we enjoy fast Internet connection, we are unaware that our PCs (is mine one?) could be zombies. Zombies are machines infected by a virus that rendered it slave to a remote master and sends lots of spam messages without the owner's knowledge.

According to the 2008 Annual Security Report by Internet security firm MessageLabs 81.3 percent of emails sent to Hong Kong computer users last year were spam, more than in any other territory or country in the world. And it's only getting worse. As of last month, spam rate is now pegged at 93.4%.

Why Hong Kong, you may ask. Simple.

1) Hong Kong is a regional financial hub and home to regional headquarters which means there are lots of opportunity to make money -- if you are clever enough to do such scheme online.

2) Why not Tokyo or Singapore, they are also financial hubs right? Yes but perhaps, Hong Kong's close proximity to China, a haven spammers and hackers might be one other reason.

Spam works even if with slightest efficiency. If you send 10 billion spam emails daily, chances are, one misguided user gets to click on an ad. Because sending spam is virtually free -- just remember the zombies above -- spammers make great deal of money out of these clicks.

Unless we teach people which links to click and which they should not, and become successful enforcers, we can only see spammer activity going to proliferate.

Photo credit: Lumatic