UK school pupils bombarded by spamPosted 10/08/2004
British schoolchildren are being receiving massive amounts of spam, according to a new survey.
The London Grid for Learning found that the majority of email messages sent to pupils in London are spam.
During the first week of a project to filter emails travelling across the grid, 75 per cent of the messages were junk.
The most popular spam message subjects were for the drugs Viagra and Valium or pornography.
Security company Email Systems claims that schools would face a deluge of spam emails when pupils return in September, if the filtering tools were not in place.
Email Systems has been awarded a three-year deal to supply web-based email filtering for The London Grid for Learning. The company said in the first week of its contract it had identified and blocked an average of 75 per cent of incoming emails each day as illegitimate, with peaks of up to 95 per cent registered.
Neil Hammerton, managing director of Email Systems, said: "The move towards more drug-related spam is extremely concerning, particularly where the recipient is either a child or a potentially inquisitive teenager."
More than a million children are on the London network, which was launched in June 2000 to provide high-speed net access, online content and services to schools. © DeHavilland Information Services plc
© 1998-2004 DeHavilland Information Services plc.
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