Spam, the raft of unsolicited e-mails promising to share the secrets of weight loss or instant wealth, account for 13 per cent of all e-mails received by Irish users, according to new survey released today.
The survey undertaken by IE Internet also found that in some cases Spam accounted for 95 per cent of mail clogging up e-mail inboxes.
The survey which is based on monitoring more than 8,000 email addresses in Irish businesses, found that 12 per cent of e-mails contain viruses and 98 per cent of Spam e-mail sent to Irish people originates outside of Ireland.
According to Mr Phelim O'Connell, managing director of IE Internet, Spam and viruses are as much a problem to Irish businesses and individuals as they are to users in the States or in Britain.
Latest research in US on the cost to business shows that Spam costs companies $1,500 per employee per year in lost productivity and lost revenue opportunities. That does not factor in the hard costs of the effect on infrastructure, download time, disk space and the damage that viruses can do to machines.
It is not a problem that can be solved by legislation as most of the Spam originates outside of this country. But adequate screening and filtering technology can go a long way towards minimising the cost of Spam to businesses, he said.
The figures are based on monitoring more than 8,000 email addresses in Irish businesses, totalling more than 100,000 emails per day.