The saddest news to come from Sophos' report is that North America, despite the considerable amount of legislative and judicial effort spent to make life harder for spammers, is the source of a whopping 48% of the world's spam. South Korea was a distant second to the U.S. in the spam stats - 13.4% compared to 42.1%.

In other developments, Sophos reported that spammers and virus writers are often colluding to do more damage to the world's networks. They also noted that spammers are now changing their domains an average of every two days, compared to every week three months ago, and have become more inventive by rotating domain names and hiding domain owner information.

Wondering what the top new "products" marketed by spam are? If you haven't looked in your spam folder in a while, here are the new campaigns:

• Work from home/prepare to succeed

• Training courses and well-paid jobs in financial sectors

• Rolex and other counterfeit products

• Religious spam that urges users to convert

So spammers, it seems, are becoming more and more like the people you see on your typical downtown streets. I wonder how long it will take homeless panhandlers to get in the spam business?