Battle as spam hits 60% of emails

A major international conference on how to tackle unsolicited email traffic was taking place today.

A poll of 1,000 computer users by internet firm Yahoo! found that one in four had been fooled into opening unwanted messages believing them to be genuine. Virtually everyone surveyed said junk e-mails were annoying but most had no idea what to do about the problem.

Internet experts advise users never to reply to a junk e-mail, open an attachment or forward it to a friend.

Other advice includes treating e-mail addresses like a phone number and not giving them out randomly.

Computer users are urged to use anti-junk technologies to guard against receiving spam.

Bulk unsolicited emails account for over 60 per cent of all email traffic on the internet, according to the Office of Fair Trading. That is up from under half in 2003 and under 10 per cent in 2001.

It is believed that over 80 per cent of spam received by UK internet users originates from overseas.

In one case, Italian consumers were targeted by spam originating in the UK, which directed recipients to a cookery website with the modem connection redirected to a premium rate line.

Service provider Yahoo! catches and diverts one billion spam messages every day.

Unsolicited emails cost US business billions of pounds in 2002 in lost time and production.