India retains 2nd rank in sending spam, US leads: Report

India has retained its second position in originating spam, accounting for about 12.55 per cent of the global junk mails sent in July, even after reducing the number of mails sent, says a study.

Besides, the US has continued to maintain its first position as the king of Spam relaying nearly one-fourth of the world's total junk mails and Brazil also continued to hold the third position with 12 per cent, the study by Trend Micro said.

Continuing the last two-month trend in July, the US, India and Brazil retained their positions as the top three spam-sending countries.

The report also noted that while India has posted a decline in numbers of mail sent, both the US and Brazil have witnessed an increase in their spam numbers during the month.

"User account information and credit card credentials reap good profits for cybercriminals. Cybercriminals continued to leverage on the widespread use of social networking sites, search engines, and redirectors this July," Trend Micro Manager(India and SAARC) Amit Nath Country said.

The report noted that attacks are now carried out using three primary vectors —- email, Web, and file.

With 11.3 per cent of global junk mails, the UK placed fourth in the list, while Germany was fifth by generating 8.66 per cent of junk messages sent around the world.

Surprisingly, China, often blamed for cybercrime by other countries, did not appear on the list .

Junk mails virtually come from malware-infected computers and cause a huge strain on company resources and leads to lost productivity.

In terms of companies, HSBC has become the top phishing target for July via email.

Among other countries on the list, Vietnam was sixth with 7.71 per cent, followed by France (6.71 per cent), Republic of Korea (6.09 per cent), Italy (5.46 per cent) and Romania (5.13 per cent).