Recently it was revealed that 14.8% of all spam email sent during a three month period in 2011 originated in India, therefore the Asian country has been dubbed the spam capital of the World. Today we can reveal that Police in India have apparently got off to a great start to their 2012 crackdown on spam.
Apparently the Police have recently arrested six men and seized 14 laptops, 23 mobile phones, multiple memory sticks and lots of fake documentation and cash. This may not sound like a lot, but spam spreads very quickly so if the six men arrested only made up for 0.5% of the World’s spam and phising scams millions of people will see less spam in their inbox as a result of this. This means that less people will have their identities hacked, credit card details stolen and so on.
The six people arrested were all Nigerian, they traveled to India to operate because the laws there are so lenient, in fact at the time of this post nothing in India’s Information Technology Act (introduced in 2000) addresses spam – as you can imagine experts are calling for a change in the law.
The fact that these arrests have taken place shows that the Indian government are listening to advice from security firms and finally taking action against such criminals, let’s hope that they continue with their crackdown and ultimately make the World a less spam-filled place. It is thought that South America is another place where such scammers are safe from cybercrime legislation, therefore even if spammers are eradicated from India (which is impossible) new spammers will arrive in countries such as Brazil.
If you head over to BBC News you can find out about the recent arrests and the legislation in India and Brazil – do you think governments should do more to combat spam and phising scams?
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