We already know for a few weeks that spam now accounts for about 9 out of ten e-mails and this week e-mail security company Postini reported a few more statistics:
As Christmas approaches, the daily trawl through in-boxes clogged with offers of fake Viagra, loans and sex aids is tipped to take even longer.
"E-mail systems are overloaded or melting down trying to keep up with all the spam," said Dan Druker, a vice president at Postini.
His company has detected 7 billion spam e-mails worldwide in November compared to 2.5 billion in June. Spam in Britain has risen by 50 percent in the last two months alone, according to Internet security company SurfControl.
The United States, China and Poland are the top sources of spam, data from security firm Marshal suggests.
Spamhays also reports about 80 percent of all spam is send by roughly 200 criminal gangs.
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