Anti-virus and anti-spam company Sophos has released its latest spam report , which covers the origin and replaying of spam for the first quarter of 2006.

According to the report, the USA accounted for over half of all spam sent to the world two years ago, but now it sends less than a quarter. The improvement is attributed to the CAN-SPAM Act and to successful US prosecutions of spammers.

Increasing amounts of spam sent from other parts of the world also help the USA’s percentage of the total to fall. Europe in particular has seen substantial increases.

Asia remains the king of spam-relaying.

You can read a summary of the report with graphs on the Sophos web site.email, spam, USA, CAN-SPAM, Europe

The US Federal Trade Commission is building a database of spam emails to help it “pursue law enforcement actions against people who send deceptive email”.

Whatever the pros and cons of the actual CAN-SPAM legislation, this can only be a good thing.

If you want to help out, you can use an AppleScript posted on macOSXHints which makes reporting the spam you receive easier.

It will forward selected spam emails to the FTC. The MacOSXHints tip includes the script itself and some instructions for its use.spam, applescript, mail.app, apple mail, FTC, CAN-SPAM