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Election doubles spam output from the US

The just-concluded US presidential election has had a monumental effect on spam emails originating from the US, data from Secure Computing shows.

According to the firm's latest Internet Threats Report for the last quarter, the amount of spam email from the US doubled, with election-related rogue messages exceeding 100 million per day.

US president-elect Barack Obama not only won the election with a landslide but also trounced republican opponent John McCain in the spam polls with a staggering 80 per cent share.

Covering both email and other online threats, the report states that mail and spam volumes recovered from the downturn in the second quarter to hit record levels in September.

"The peak occurred on September 11, showing once again that spammers have no shame in using this infamous date for personal monetary gain," said the report.

According to the report, the top five originators of spam messages are the US followed by Turkey, Russia, Brazil and South Korea.

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