ISS discovered a 100 per cent increase year on year in spam. From December 2006 through until January 2007 Messagelabs found a 1.5 per cent increase in spam globally.

In January, spam totalled 75.8 per cent of all e-mails captured by MessageLabs' Traffic Management in January.

In Australia, spam levels increased 0.1 per cent in January according to the MessageLabs 2007 Intelligence Report.

The report also found the amount of viruses hidden in e-mail traffic had increased 0.08 per cent since last month, accounting for one in 119.9 e-mails, with a stern warning about the new wave of refined Trojan code called Rustock.

"It is now believed that the suspected Russian criminals responsible for last year's Trojan, SpamThru, have been updating their botnets to another Trojan bot called Rustock," the report said.