March 11, 2008: Statistics from the security firm Sophos purports to show that small territories are contributing significantly to the tremendous volume of spam email distributed globally. The report published data on a per capita basis, which cited none of the major contributors of spam on the internet. Rather the list read as follows:

1. The Pitcairn Islands      (Population: 48 -(July 2007 Est.))
2. Niue                            (Population: 1492 - (July 2007 Est.))
3. Tokelau                       (Population: ~1500)
4. Anguilla                             (Population: 13,677 - (July 2007 Est.))
5. The Faroe Islands        (Population: 47,511 (July 2007 Est.))
6. Monaco                      (Population: 32,671 (July 2007 Est.) )
7. Bermuda                     (Population: 66,163 (July 2007 Est.))
8. Falkland Islands          (Population: 3,105 (July 2007 Est.))
9. Andorra                      (Population: 71,822 (July 2007 Est.))
10. Aruba                       (Population: 100,018 (July 2007 Est.))

The United States, Russia and China - which accounted for 33.8 percent of all spam in Q4 2007, are notably absent from the top 10, while each country cited above would be an insignificant source to global internet users.

Bearing in mind, for example, that Anguilla has 0.0045% of the population of the USA,  per capita data will seldom see both appearing on the same top 10 list regardless of the subject. In addition, consider the Pitcairn islands, where one (1) infraction from their population will surpass the USA unless that country registers more than 6,273,748 infractions - such comparisons are meaningless.

While interesting at first glance, the fact remains that the origin of  global email spam on the internet is reflected more accurately by the Sophos's earlier data, illustrating the top twelve spam-relaying countries are as follows: