Egham firms get more spam than rest of UK

7:40am Wednesday 1st October 2008

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Egham businesses receive more spam emails than anywhere else in the UK, a poll by an international web security company has revealed.

According to results of a survey by MessageLabs, Egham business users receive an average of 189 spam messages daily.

“We have got firewalls and filters but we have to relax these because of the nature of our business - we can’t risk someone’s genuine application for work not getting through.”

Jamie Mistlin, Recruitment Revolution

London business users ranked 28th on the spam charts while Fareham on the south coast came bottom, receiving only two spam emails on average per week.

Senior anti-spam technologist Matt Sergeant said: “Bigger organisations will typically have better policies in place when it comes to internet security, and these organisations are usually located in the UK’s larger cities.

“By contrast, businesses operating outside of major towns and cities are usually small and midsize companies with less time and resources to devote to IT security.”

Jamie Mistlin, 29, director of Egham recruitment company Recruitment Revolution said he received around 600 spam emails daily.

He said: “It’s an absolute pain in the morning as it takes ages to download emails. Later in the day, when Outlook is trying to download more emails, there are so many that sometimes everything crashes.

“We have got firewalls and filters but we have to relax these because of the nature of our business - we can’t risk someone’s genuine application for work not getting through.”

The survey also revealed that 15 per cent of spam emails received originated within the UK, behind the US, China and Russia.

Webusers can avoid receiving spam after registering on websites by using different or unusual email addresses and being sure not to permit third party contact.

Users are advised not to reply to, remove, forward or click on spam and if possible, should install a managed anti-spam service to block nuisance emails.

• Are you inundated with spam emails? Post your comments below.