Recent research shows that about 60% of spam comes from US companies, and only about 10% from Russia and Ukraine.
Whenever ESET Ireland warns the public of some new spam or scam that’s hitting Irish mailboxes, we inevitably get asked the question, where is this all coming from, who is behind it. Now we have some latest statistics from Spamhaus, a Swiss-based organization, whose mission is to track the Internet’s spam operations, that shed some light on the spamming sources. Up to 80% of spam targeted at Internet users in North America and Europe is generated by a hard-core group of around 100 known professional spam gangs whose names, aliases and operations are documented in their database. The chart of listed spammers is based on those that are viewed as the highest threat, the worst of the career spammers causing the most damage on the Internet currently. They flag these gangs and individuals as a priority for law enforcement agencies.
Their activities include using many falsified domains to send tens of millions of spams per day using botnet techniques, renting an endless number of servers to host their own spam webpages and the webpages of their spam-clients, billing for child, animal, and incest-porn, pirated software, and fake pharmaceuticals.
At ESET Ireland we often write about various spams and scams targeting Irish computer users, such as the recent fraudulent “Notice of Tax Return” purporting to come from Irish Tax and Customs and many others. Most of the time it is difficult to define where the spam is coming from, as the cybercriminals behind it use various techniques to hide their origin behind faked domain names.
All the spam the cybercriminals send is in various ways designed to make money for them and never for the benefit of the receiver, no matter what wonderful things it may promise. ESET Ireland therefore recommends computer users use spam filters and flag and delete any spam they may encounter, to help prevent its spreading.
by Urban Schrott
IT Security & Cybercrime Analyst
ESET Ireland
ESET Ireland 
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