The United States remains the top spammer in 2010

The United States retained its top position in the "Dirty Dozen" list of spam relaying nations compiled by security firm Sophos.

"Traditional subject matter such as adverts for pharmaceuticals continue to be a concern, with some 36 million Americans reported to purchase drugs from unlicensed online sellers--but more and more messages are spreading malware and are attempting to phish user names, passwords and personal information," Sophos said in a statement.

The statement also noted that the number of focused phishing attacks, known as spearphishing, on consumers, increased along with reports of malicious apps, compromised profiles, and unwanted messages being spread across social networks like Facebook.

"Spam is certainly here to stay, however the motivations and the methods are continuing to change in order to reap the greatest rewards for the spammers," Sophos Senior Technology Consultant Graham Cluley said. "What's becoming even more prevalent is the mailing of links to poisoned web pages--victims are tricked into clicking a link in an email, and then led to a site that attacks their computer with exploits or attempts to implant fake anti-virus software."

In the list the top three positions were shared among the US, India and Brazil with 18.83%, 6.88% and 5.04% of spam relays worldwide respectively.

Below the top three spammers, only the United Kingdom in the fifth slot with 4.54 percent of the relays, Romania at number 11 with 2.3 percent and Spain in the 12 spot with 2.24 percent preserved their positions from the previous period.

Both Russia and Italy rose in the ranks--Russia to number four (4.64 percent) from a seven last quarter and Italy to seven (3.17 percent) from 10.