The Philippine Star reports that 88 percent of emails coming from the Philippines are spam, making the Philippines the worst offender of the spam wars.

Of course, since China is much larger and generates more emails, the absolute number of spam coming from China greatly outnumbers those from here, even though only 37% of their emails fall into the “spam” catagory.

And in a sign of how globalization and internet cafes have arrived in even the most obscure countries, the report reveals that Vietnam (86 percent), Sri Lanka (86 percent), Laos (85 percent) and Malaysia (84 percent.) also generate a lot of spam.

Of course, the Philippines was the origin of the notorious Iloveyou virus a couple years ago.

Although I live in a rural town, even eight years ago, when our street a block from the city center still was gravel and the water buffalo grazed across the street, nevertheless we had internet cafes full of students playing games and checking email during their lunch hour. Now we have broad band, and over 60% of schools have computers.

One hopes that with the call centers opening in Makati that the computer literate youth will find better outlets for their skills in the future.

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Nancy Reyes is a retired physician living in the rural Philippines. Her website is Finest Kind Clinic and Fishmarket