Spam accounted for 30% of emails in January

Spam, unsolicited commercial email, accounted for more than 30 per cent of all emails received by Irish business users last month…

Spam, unsolicited commercial email, accounted for more than 30 per cent of all emails received by Irish business users last month, a survey has found.

The main source of spam was the US (55.58 per cent).  China accounted for 4.33 per cent of spam, Canada 4.14 per cent, the Republic of Korea 3.85 per cent, France 1.24 per cent and Britain 1.18 per cent.

A monthly survey by technology firm IE Internet found the incidence of virus contamination was also "relatively high" at more than 2.4 per cent.  The virus 'Mydoom' accounted for more than 88 per cent of virus attacks in January.  Viruses called Bagle, Klez and Bugbear were also among the top five most prevalent computer infections.

The statistics are based on monitoring of 8,000 business users.