A landmark study by a Netherlands university has found that less than half a percent of ISPs sampled were responsible for around half the world’s spam.
Using data from the Composite Blocking List, Giovane Moura of the University of Twente’s Centre for Telematics and Information Technology monitored over 42,000 Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) online. In one example, 60 percent of email addresses located at a small ISP in Nigeria were spam-related.
The findings of the research were enlightening. The IP addresses identifying the source of spam were sometimes similar, and in some cases could be found in similar geographic locations, leading to the concept of ‘bad neighbourhoods’ online that can form the targets of increased security measures.
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