The UK now receives 20 billion spam emails a day, roughly one sixth of the daily global total, filtering company IronPort has said.

Latest spam and virus end-of-year trends and prediction report has found 2007 spam levels have increased 100 per cent on last year’s volumes and now makes up a $200-billion business.

“Just when malware design seemed to have reached a plateau, new attack techniques have emerged, some so complex – and obviously not the work of amateurs – they could have only been designed by means of sophisticated research and development,” said Jason Steer, European product manager for IronPort.

Contradicting the popular view that spam exists solely to hawk unwanted and fraudulent products to the gullible, IronPort’s analysis suggests that the motivation has increasingly become to spread malware for a range of other criminal purposes. Such “dirty spam”, containing links to malware-spreading websites, grew 253 percent in the last year, the company said.