If you can't decide whether kids accessing porn or spam overall accessing just about everyone is the worse of two annoyances, what a surprise. Last month, a major report showing lots of kids access lots of cyberporn sent Australian officials into a mild lather. This month, another research report, from England, shows spam is still the biggest pain in the cyberbutt when surfers open their e-mail – by far.
British-based MessageLabs, whose specialty is email security programs and systems, said spam in February accounted for one out of every 3.9 emails surveyed, while viruses came attached to one in every 293. Only one in every 1,670 messages contained porn.
The shrinkage in porn spam was the largest of the three groups; in January, MessageLabs said, it was one porn spam per 749 emails, compared to one virus per 203 emails.
The report came a month after PC Magazine named MessageLabs's SkyScan the most effective anti-spam service among several the magazine's researchers tested. SkyScan had a 96.03 percent success rate, a five-point lead over the second best program, the magazine said.
