UK students swamped by spam and viruses

UK students are being overwhelmed with increasing levels of spam email much of which carries potentially damaging attachments.

According to figures released by Email Systems, 60 per cent of emails arriving in school inboxes over the past six months have spam or have contain viruses.

While that figure is largely in keeping with global average, Neil Hammerton, MD of Email Systems, said it's more worrying because of who is being exposed to the email.

"It's deeply concerning that young children are being exposed to these emails particularly those of an offensive nature such as hardcore pornography," said Hammerton, adding that while adults may still find such images offensive are better prepared to deal with them.

He added that children are also prone to curiosity and may be tempted to follow links which could potentially lead to a whole raft of associated problems such as downloading Trojans or spyware, and potentially adding to the spam problem by creating an open proxy or a 'zombie'.

Email Systems specialises in filtering email for the academic sector and in association with the London Grid for Learning is filters mail for 1.1 million inboxes in the South East.

Spammers do not actively target schools, but nor do they care that their random methods of harvesting email addresses will likely result in young children being exposed to the images and language contained in their emails.

Hammerton claimed his company intercepts around 99 per cent of spam email destined for schools but said many schools and education authorities have still not woken up to the problem.

He believes others have simply got it wrong when implementing strategies and are now unprepared to admit their mistakes.

"The only really effective way of combating this problem is with a managed service model," said Hammerton, adding that the volumes of traffic involved cannot be dealt with on the schools network but should be handled by one of the many companies now offering a managed services model.

"Those schools who have already invested in software may be unwilling to write off that investment and change but they will have to," he added.

"Parents should be aware what is happening at their child's school and should put pressure on the school to ensure their child is effectively protected from spam."