Spam e-mails? India is world's No 2

India has been ranked second in the list of "dirty dozen" spam relaying countries, accounting for over seven per cent of global junk mails sent during the first quarter of the year, according to a new study.

The country is lagging behind the US, which continues to remain as the king of spam, relaying more than 13 per cent of world's total junk mails, while China has successfully pulled itself out of the list, the study by computer security firm Sophos said on Thursday.

With 6.8 per cent of global junk mails, Brazil placed third in the list, while South Korea ranked fourth by generating 4.8 per cent of junk messages sent around the world every day.

Vietnam was fifth with 3.4 per cent, followed by Germany (3.2 per cent), Britain (3.1 per cent), Russia (3.1 per cent), Italy (3.1 per cent), France (3.0 per cent), Romania (2.5 per cent) and Poland (2.4 per cent).

Surprisingly, China, often blamed for cybercrime by other countries, has come in at 15th place with responsibility for relaying just 1.9 per cent of the world's spam, according to the study.

"All eyes aren't so much on which countries are on the list, but the one which isn't," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

"China has earned itself a bad reputation in many country's eyes for being the launch pad of targeted attacks against foreign companies and government networks, but at least in the last 12 months they can demonstrate that the proportion of spam relayed by their computers has steadily reduced.

"A new dirty 'gang of four' -- South Korea, Brazil, India and their ringleader USA -- account for over 30 per cent of all the spam relayed by hacked computers around the globe."

The study, however, showed that despite China's improved ranking, Asia accounted for 33.7 per cent of junk mails sent between January and March of this year.

Continent wise, this figure is larger than Europe's 31.2 per cent, North America's 16.9 per cent and 14.7 percent for Latin America, said Sophos, a Boston-based IT firm that provides security and data protection solutions.

Junk mails, which virtually come from malware-infected computers and cause a huge strain on company resources and leads to lost productivity, accounts for 97 per cent of all messages received by business email servers, many of them selling counterfeit or illicit goods, the company said.