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Barracuda Networks' annual spam report says junk email levels have risen to between 90-95% of all messages this year, up from only 5% in 2001.

The figures, based on a billion emails sent between Barracuda's customers, are sharp increase on last year, where 85-90% of all messages were estimated to be spam.

Barracuda says spammers keep finding new ways to break through

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the filters, such as the emergence of PDF spam earlier this year. "The spam war is a continuous battle between spammers and security vendors," says Dean Drako, president and CEO of Barracuda Networks.

"Security vendors now require 24-by-7 defence operations to continuously monitor the internet for new spam trends and distribute new defensive solutions immediately. This combination can block a new spam attack within minutes of its start - virtually at zero hour."

Barracuda's research found that many businesses are being bombarded by spam, with 13% of workers claiming to wade through more than 50 junk messages every day.

The survey comes just a fortnight after Google claimed it may have turned a corner in the fight against spam,after it revealed that the amount of junk mail entering its Gmail system had declined for the first time.