Why World Is Under Spam Attack

People would receive more than 70 Spam e-mails every day without protecting their computers, a study has found.
Security group McAfee recruited 50 people around the world and encouraged them to open themselves up to spam to see how many unwanted e-mails they received.

Participants were encouraged to register with websites and respond to all the SPAM messages they received.

In total, the people taking part received 104,000 messages, more than 2,000 each.

The UK received the fifth most messages, with more than 11,965 coming in, while it was the most popular target for the infamous Nigerian spam, with 23% of the world's total coming to UK residents.

This ruse sees people being contacted by Nigerians who claim they are the beneficiary of a long-lost relative's will in an effort to extract money from them.

McAfee showed in the experiment that spam is not only a nuisance but can also compromise performance.

Many attempt to install malware or viruses on computers, while the sheer volume can lead to a slowdown of performance on both local machines and networks.

Greg Day, a security analyst with McAFee, told Sky News Online that many people taking part had actually missed real e-mails because they were so busy trawling through unwanted messages.

He added: "It's like asking someone in the street for a home address - online if someone asks for an e-mail address we are just willing to hand it over.

"I am unwilling to hand my address out to anyone apart from someone I want to communicate with."

Simon Nicol, one of the UK participants, said he managed to track down some of the people sending the spam.

He told Sky News Online: "If I can track them down in five minutes how come our security people can track them down?"

Mr Day said: "It's easy to go in and do a reverse look-up and you will get to somewhere.

"You can find an origin point but is that origin point really the end target - it's worthwhile trying to stop that host but there are millions of PCs compromised."

Danni Williams, another participant, said that her behaviour had changed as a result of the experiment.

She told Sky News Online: "I'm a lot more aware of sites and giving my details away but I still surf the internet and join up to things, but I have two separate e-mails."

And she advised: "Be really aware, everyone is out to get you constantly and even when you try to get out of it they just send more and it's just a vicious cycle and you can't get out of it."
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