Our friends over at SpamShield have come up with a really nifty use for Google maps – they have created a spam map – they call it “Spam World” – which maps where all the spam is coming from – around the world – in real time (well, updated every fifteen minutes).

According to the map right now – while there are hundreds of IP addresses spewing spam across the world – in Russia, China, the Middle East, and Central and South America – the top spam-spewing IP addresses are in…. Reston, Virginia, in a Verizon cluster!

And, in fact, while conventional anti-spammer wisdom says that Florida is the most spammer-friendly state, a paltry 33 IP addresses are at this moment sending spam from Florida, while the Verizon cluster alone in Virginia contains a whopping 624 spamming IP addresses on its own.

The blueish purple map ‘pin’ – also the largest one – represents the largest number of IP addresses spewing spam at the moment. The pinkish red ones are IP addresses spewing out approximately 25% as much spam as the big purple one, while the orange pins and the green pins represent 10% and 5% as many IP addresses sending spam as the purple one, respectively.

The map makes for fascinating reading.

Now, if only the folks in the position to could do something with this information, to stop these IP addresses from sending spam at all!

Here’s the map – to go to the SpamShield site to see the most current version, just give it a click!