Spam Mails Hitting Workers’ Mailboxes in the UK

Internet security firm MessageLabs recently conducted a research, which reveals that employees working in the city of Scarborough, UK, receive an average of 9.7 spam mails per day. Scarborough ranks 139th among the total of 229 towns and cities the company surveyed, ahead of Bristol and Newcastle.

Further, workers in some towns like Egham in Surrey receive a huge 189 unsolicited e-mails each day, while those working in Alton Hampshire receive similar messages at a mean of 167 times. However, Fareham, also in Hampshire, is spammers least preferred target as staff there gets a mean of merely two messages per week.

Meanwhile, businessmen acknowledged that spam mails have made an impact on their businesses. According to one entrepreneur, businessmen receive thousands of spam messages, and they are now extremely careful that they don't open them. The entrepreneur also said that they had been hit twice by spam carrying viruses that caused their computers to crash, and such a phenomenon of systems going down could be extremely dangerous to businesses.

Further, MessageLabs' analysis suggests that companies bear higher rates of spam that belongs to IT services, manufacturing and recreation sectors. The third sector (recreation) makes up a considerable part of Scarborough's economy, and is more vulnerable to spam due to its very character of business in which e-mail IDs commonly belong to the public domain.

Similarly, manufacturing businesses might also suffer from a high rate of spam, as the sizes of organizations seem large to the external world, but there is a much smaller number of employees who are online have a valid e-mail address.

Separately, MessageLabs also declared the outcome of its US survey in which the company indicated that Indiana inboxes were on the list of the top ten destinations for spam in the US. The Hoosier state ranked 7 for receiving unsolicited e-mails. These e-mails accounted for 87.6% of all e-mails.

And while neighboring Illinois ranked 1 in the study, the cluttering of mailboxes with junk messages is a widespread problem nationwide, and MessageLabs estimates that over 80% of all the e-mails are regarded as spam.

Related article: Spam Scam Bags a Scottish Connection

» SPAMfighter News - 10/18/2008