Computer users in Egham get most spam

Egham in Surrey is the spam capital of Britain with an average 187 spam messages a day, according to a new survey that measured the amount of junk mail per user.

It turns out that on this basis big cities get off relatively lightly, as none appears in the top 25 locations listed by web security specialist Messagelabs.

London ranked 28th, Manchester 81st, Leeds 91st, Liverpool 99th, Newcastle 166th and Bristol 167th.

Paul Wood of Messagelabs points out that this does not mean cities don't get a lot of spam. But because of the demographics of business, and a peculiarity in the way spammers work, individual users in smaller places tend to be hit most.

"These places have a large proportion of small to medium-sized businesses with a staff of between 100 and 200, and perhaps these need to promote themselves by sending out contact addresses that get on spam lists. Larger enterprises don't need to do this so much," he said.

But the type of business makes a lot of difference. "Manufacturers and retail outlets have a lot of staff but only a relatively small proportion are sitting in front of computers."

A company with 10,000 people may only have 500 using a PC, but the spammers are aware only of the full staff level and generate traffic accordingly.

Britain's top ten spam locations, based on an analysis of the traffic through Messagelabs' spam filters, are: Egham, Surrey; Alton, Hampshire; Petersfield, Hampshire; Sutton Coldfield, Midlands; Sutton, Greater London; Macclesfield, Cheshire; Dundee, Scotland; Bradford, West Yorkshire; Colchester, Essex; St Peter’s Port, Guernsey

Fareham in Hampshire received the lowest level with just two spam emails per week.

Only around one in six spam emails originates in the UK; most comes from the US, followed by Russia and China.