Spam-email ratio hits 98 per cent some days

Hosted email security supplier SoftScan has reported a 39 per cent increase in spam levels last month from August.

To put that in context, for the businesses using this particular firm's security service between 94 to 98 per cent of all mail was spam on some days. Its lowest point was around 88 per cent at the start of the month. SoftScan doesn't work with consumers, whose spam levels could be even higher.

The firm's chief technology officer Diego d'Ambra said: "Since June this year we have seen an increase of 95% in the amount of spam we stop each month." A rise in spam had been expected in September - malware writers tend to take the summer off too, and they like to wait for term to restart so they can target students. But this leap is the biggest single month jump the company has seen in its five years of operation.

Viruses were low in volume - just 0.14 per cent of traffic - but a new virus attack happened daily. The top five viral groups or families detected by the firm's filters were split into phishing (71 per cent), freegame (seven per cent), downloader (four per cent), foolball (four per cent) and netsky (three per cent).

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