Experiment reveals UK to be ‘most targeted’ by Nigerian spammers

Rob Stringer

In a test that monitored the emails of 50 volunteers over ten countries in thirty days, the UK received almost a quarter of the total Nigerian Spam emails.

The experiment, known as Spammed Persistently All Month and carried out by McAfee, permitted the volunteers to surf the web unrestricted. Results showed that 23% of these notorious financial fraud emails went to the UK, which also received the fifth highest amount of spam in the world.

In the course of the month, over 104 000 spam emails were received, with the UK accounting for 11 965 instances. One thousand one hundred and forty nine of these were noted in the first week, making it the third highest ‘first week spam count’ in the world.

Many of the volunteers also reported a deterioration in the performance of their computers as well as a notable increase in number of pop ups, suggesting that malware was also being downloaded.

“I think we can see from the experiment that spam is undeniably linked to cybercrime,” remarked Dave De Walt, CEO of McAfee. “However it is such an immense problem and it’s never going to go away. It’s no longer a question of ‘solving’ it, but one of ‘managing’ it.”

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