Egham is UK's spam capital

Sep 29 2008 By Russell Butt

Spam email

Egham receives more spam email than anywhere in the UK, according to a survey by a web services provider.

The town hit top spot in a survey by London-based MessageLabs, showing on average on a spam per business-user basis, companies receive nearly 190 of these emails per day.

And the reason for its number one position could be because of the town having lots of companies like consumer goods giant such as Procter & Gamble

John Phillips, financial controller at fitness company, Competition Line UK in Eversley Way, said despite its efforts junk emails still found their way through.

He said: "We get quite a bit actually. We run a network that serves about 20 people and despite having quite a bit of software to stop spam we still get a number of junk emails getting through to each person.

He added: "Egham has quite a high industrial level with the trading estates in the town and maybe that's why it's top. I'm not sure these people look at a map, I think it's just more from a bought list of email addresses."

Director of Ashdrive Accountants in Egham High Street, Harinder Sethi, said deleting the unsolicited emails had become part of the daily process.

He said: "We get a fair share of them every day. We have internet security that filters out most the spam, but on any given day, I think I get at least 50 or 60 of them."

Egham businesses receive an average of 189 unwanted emails per day, ahead of Alton and Petersfield, both in Hampshire, which had 167 and 116 respectively. Surprisingly, none of the UK's major cities even featured in the top 20 with London coming in 28th, Liverpool, 99th and Bristol, 167th.

Fifteen percent of the spam emails received came from within the UK, but the majority were being sent from the United States.

Egham Chamber of Commerce chairman, Mark Adams, said he was sceptical about the survey's findings, suggested it might be marketing on the part of MessageLabs.

He added: "It just goes to show that spam is an issue for all businesses, large or small and it's just something we have to live with."