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The S.P.A.M. experiment saw 50 people from ten countries across the world given a new laptop, with no spam protection, and an email address for 30 days. All were encouraged to pursue advertisements, register for free promotions and respond to any other unsolicited emails they receive.

The participants received a total of 104,000 spam emails, which works out at around 70 each day. According to McAfee, many of the spam messages received were

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phishing emails, where scammers posed as a trustworthy organisations or people, to acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and bank account details.

Some emails carried viruses or silently installed malware by directing participants to surf unsafe websites. None of the UK participants received viruses, but 8 per cent of the spam emails received were classified as phishing emails, from cyber criminals posing as representatives from Chase.com, Bank of America, Wachovia.com and eBay. Participants noticed an increased number of pop-ups and a reduction in their computer's processing speed.

"The McAfee S.P.A.M. Experiment proves to us that even though people think they know the dangers of spam, they don't understand the true extent," said.Dave De Walt, CEO of McAfee. "I think we can see from the experiment that spam is undeniably linked to cybercrime, however it is such an immense problem and it's never going to go away. It's no longer a question of 'solving' it, but one of 'managing' it," he added.