McAfee: Unprotected web users get 70 spam messages per day and rising

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Spam email is dominating mail boxes everywhere and is rising at an alarming rate. To highlight this problem, McAfee invited 50 people from around the world to participate in a month-long study.

The participants were allowed to browse the Web without any spam filters. The study showed the average Web user received 70 spam e-mails each day.

U.K. residents mostly receive Nigerian and adult spam messages. One U.K. resident received 5,414 spam emails during the month-long trial.

The study showed U.S. residents got the most spam e-mails (23,233). The data from other countries are shown below:

• Brazil - 15,856
• Italy - 15,610
• Mexico - 12,229
• UK - 11,965
• Australia - 9,214
• The Netherlands - 6,378
• Spain - 5,419
• France - 2,597
• Germany - 2,331

The study shows the rate at which users get spam is not slowing down. Compter users in the study not only received many spam messages, but also found their computers were slowing down because of websites installing malware according to Guy Roberts, director of McAfee's labs in Europe.

Roberts told BBC News:

"Spam is most definitely much more than a nuisance; it's a very real and fast-growing threat."

Among the spam messages, nearly 8 per cent of the emails were phishing threats that are intended to solicit financial data information from a user. A user should know that no financial company will ask a user to send protected information by email.

McAfee found that spammers are getting smarter by sending targeted messages such as pre-approved loans or credit cards.

McAfee said users in the study were surprised the variety of spam messages they received.

Dave De Walt, chief executive of McAfee, told BBC that from the study they found that spam messages are intricately connected with cybercrime.

"However, it is such an immense problem and it's never going to go away. It's no longer a question of solving it but one of managing it."

One good solution for spam message control is Gmail. When I used Hotmail or Yahoo Mail, I used to receive tons of spam messages in my inbox. With Gmail, I still receive spam messages but Google puts them in a spam box and I delete them with a single click. I receive only a few spam e-mails in my inbox.

Managing emails is easy with Gmail, but I hope they institute a global law and punish spammers because it is getting out of hand. In 2007, it was discovered that nearly 95 per cent of emails received are spam e-mails.