I’ve always found it ironic that a certain percentage of emails sent from Viet Nam to other countries end up in colleagues’ SPAM folders because of the security settings of their institutions’ servers. The irony lies in the fact that Viet Nam does not rank among the top 10 “worst enabling Spam countries” in the world. In fact, here are the top 10, as of 18 January 2020, according to The Spamhaus Project. Who’s #1? USA, USA, USA! (China and the USA have competed for the top spot for quite some time.) As you can see, Russia ranks a distant third.

1

United States of America

Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 4944

2

China

Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 3496

3

Russian Federation

Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 1148

4

Ukraine

Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 677

5

India

Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 647

6

Japan

Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 548

7

France

Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 497

8

Hong Kong

Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 483

9

United Kingdom

Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 465

10

Germany

Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 379

Then there are computer viruses, also monitored worldwide by Spamhaus and listed on its Composite Blocking List website. Viet Nam performs “better” in this category with a ranking of #4 in the column under “By Infections.” The top three offenders in descending order are India, China, and Iran. For its part, the USA ranks 6th sandwiched between Brazil (#5) and Thailand (#7).

There has to be better way of screening emails than blanket technical condemnations based on country of origin (?).

Shalom (שלום), MAA