Irish study shows potent threat of spam

SMEs in Ireland are being frustrated by increasing amounts of spam, according to a new study.

Email hosting firm IE Internet revealed that the amount of spam hitting the small business sector has risen by a worrying 11 per cent in the last three months alone.

The study suggested that most of the unwanted email came from spammers in the US and France, while so-called 'zombie' computers were a likely major source.

Ken O'Driscoll, chief technology officer at IE Internet, said: "Zombie armies are proving lucrative for spammers."

He added that the virus-infected computers allowed the spammer to work without revealing his identity or location.

"While the rate of email viruses has been dropping consistently, new viruses are still being written."

Some 53 per cent of January emails logged in Ireland were identified as spam, but the figure has risen to 64 per cent since the start of the year.

The survey followed recent research from anti-spam organisation SoftScan, which showed that spam constituted 88.51 per cent of all email traffic in the UK.

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