The World's Worst Spammer Is ...

So you find your morning spam deluge annoying? Well, you can thank India, which has become the world's top sender of spam emails, the Los Angeles Times reports. Its poor law enforcement and burgeoning middle class—which adds about 7 million computers monthly—are largely behind the dubious distinction. "This is one record India doesn't want so much," says a technology officer in India.

Some of the spamming is legal, like the emails that flow from Brainpulse Technologies, a "digital marketing" company specializing in bulk mail campaigns. But much of the spam is distributed by Internet crooks who get computer users to click on email attachments that turn their machines into "bots"—Web robots that spew spam around the world. "While the spam originates from a location in India, it's very difficult to find where the actual fingers on the keyboard are," says a Symantec official. (More spam stories.)