Almost 90 per cent of all emails scanned by security company SoftScan in the month of July were spam, the company has revealed.

SoftScan acknowledges that the percentage increase in spam last month is due to less legitimate email being sent as many users are on holiday, rather than an actual increase in spam, but the company points out the dangers for users without spam protection.

“It’s not just the extended coffee breaks sharing holiday snaps that cut into productivity when users come back to work,” said Bo Engelbrechtsen, corporate communications manager at SoftScan. “Clearing the average inbox of junk mail can take quite a time and when you factor in the additional storage space it took up during the holiday period, it’s easy to see that spam costs businesses dearly.”

The highest percentage of spam stopped in July was 95.95 per cent on Saturday 15, but SoftScan said that generally spam levels have reach a plateau at around the 85 per cent mark. This level has now been steady for the last 18 months, only rising during traditional holiday periods when there is less business email.

Virus levels rose marginally this month to 0.44 per cent of all email, up from 0.36 per cent in June, but this figure is still significantly low. However, SoftScan believes this only demonstrates a change in malware writers’ tactics, not that viruses and other related malware are on their way out.