the first three months of the year, according to a U.S. IT security firm. In the period from January to March, China accounted for 7.5 percent of all worldwide spam, Boston-based Sophos said in a statement. This compared with 21.9 percent in the year-earlier period, according to previous Sophos data.
"China, who until recently was an intimate rival to the U.S., dropped dramatically during the last quarter," said Carole Theriault, a senior security consultant at Sophos.
No immediate explanation was provided in the statement as to why spam had declined from China, otherwise seen as a spam superpower.
However Internet communications from China and elsewhere in Asia have only recently recovered from damage to undersea cables caused by an earthquake near Taiwan last December.
Despite the decline, China maintained its position as the world's number two spammer after the United States.
American spammers produced 19.8 percent of the world's junk e-mail in the first quarter of 2007, down from 23.1 percent in the first quarter of 2006.
Almost 70 percent of all emails in Asia are spam, anti-virus firm Symantec Corp said last month.
Symantec reported then that 37 percent of all spam detected from the Asia-Pacific came from China.
