Research undertaken by Eircom into customers using its e-mail protector software, which is designed to intercept unwanted or potentially harmful email messages such as viruses, revealed that 54% of mail sent to Eircom. net's 800,000 users was spam.

Eircom claims that up to 95% of spam, unsolicited and usually unwanted email often advertising products or linking to pornographic websites, was blocked by the protector software, which Eircom is currently trying to promote to customers.

Out of a sample of 200 million messages scanned by Eircom's e-mail protector over the past year, 5% contained viruses, which were contained by the system.

Overall, according to the Eircom statistics, 6% of all messages received by Eircom. net customers last year contained viruses. That equates to more than 144 million messages of the 2.4bn received by Eircom customers between June 2005 and May 2006.

The most prolific virus sent during that period was the much-feared Netsky, a mass-mailing "worm" virus that automatically sends itself to everyone on an e-mail user's address book, clogging inboxes and slowing down networks.

Irish internet users are also being targeted by a huge volume of spam.

More than half of all e-mail received by Eircom. net users last year was unsolicited and/or unwanted.

Both virus and spam activity appears to peak during the summer months, according to the statistics. Up to 50% more virus e-mails than average were sent in June last year, while spam email jumped to 65% of all email sent during May.

On a brighter note, the total volume of spam aimed at Irish inboxes has reached a plateau, showing no increase between 2004 and 2005, according to Eircom.