Earlier this month, Sophos revealed that there was a surprise newcomer to the dirty dozen spam relaying countries. Having never made an appearance in this chart previously, Poland made a dramatic entry at number three and was responsible for relaying 7.4 percent of all the world's spam. Sophos's research shows that one single ISP is largely responsible for Poland's position as one of the world's principal spammers. From January to March 2007, one in 20 of all spam messages worldwide was sent via Polish Telecom.

"The fact that one average-sized Polish ISP is single-handedly responsible for relaying five percent of the world's spam is astonishing - which is why we are currently in talks with them on how they can reduce this glut of unwanted mail," continued Theriault. "Spam is a difficult problem to solve as every government legislates differently and the responsibility of the ISPs varies from place to place. There are also market demands that often pressure ISPs to lower prices rather than invest into processes to clean up their output."

In total, the amount of spam relayed in Q1 2007 has increased by 4.2 percent over the same period last year.