Who's the worst source of spam? It's a horse race now

It used to be that you could always count on the U.S. to be the worst source of spam in the world, with maybe China or Brazil coming in a distant second.

But things seem to be changing. In early December, a number of articles were published in eSecurity Planet and other sources about a report from Cisco that Brazil had finally overtaken the U.S. as the spam leader. The U.S. had a peak of 8.3 trillion spam messages (more than one thousand for every man, woman, and child on the planet) in 2008. But thanks to U.S. ISPs finally getting at least a little bit serious about the spam problem, as in the takedown of McColo last year, the number declined to a mere 6.6 trillion in 2009.

Meanwhile, Brazil managed to climb to 7.7 trillion, edging out the U.S. as the spam king of the planet.

But wait, there's more. According to a Network Box article in 2009, Vietnam had become the world spam leader, producing 10.9% of all spam worldwide, with Brazil in second place at 8.3%. CircleId has also picked up the story, although Business Week has Vietnam in 16th place at 1.7% of all spam.

So who's really in first place? Perhaps Network Box and Cisco are counting in different ways (Network Box seems to be counting spam separately from phishing and viruses, while perhaps Cisco is combining them. And where is China in all this? And what can the U.S. do to regain its preeminent position?

There's one more point to ponder: Vietnam, China, and Brazil may be the places where most of the spam is delivered from, but I think if you follow the trails (and follow the money), you'll find that it all leads back to the U.S.