The Brits Get Bitten By Spam Mania

UK seems to be grappling with the spam problem more than ever before. According to a recent study, home computers in the UK are hit by around 68 million spam e-mails per day.

The frequency of spam attacks in the UK is a whopping 787 spam mails per second. With a quarter of PCs in UK getting at least ten of the unwanted messages from unknown senders every 24 hours, this threat has chances of increasing.

The main source of spam is advertisements for medication and pills. They make up 41.4 per cent of the total spam sent. Mortgage ads account for 11.1 percent of
the total spam. The share of adult content spam comes to 9.5 percent. Stocks and shares scams came in at number four with a share of 8.5 percent.

According to the study done by utilities comparisons site uSwitch.com, nearly 85% of the UK homes that are connected to the Internet are affected by spam. To make matters more complicated, more than one in 10 users end up opening the nuisance mails and thus opening the door to viruses that infect the computers.

Chris Williams, broadband product manager at uSwitch.com, warned "Spam has been a problem ever since the Internet became available to the general public in the late '80s but, as we've become an online nation, spam is an epidemic with potentially damaging consequences."

Vulnerability of home PCs is 10 times more than the machines in companies and workplaces. Home PCs are known to be easy targets for spam attacks.

Williams advices all computer users to make use of the free spam filters offered by most broadband suppliers, as these utilities will go a long way in lessening the risk of spam and other bogus mails.

Related article: THE SPAM MAFIA

» SPAMfighter News - 6/17/2006