A study undertaken by the European Commission on the ‘spam (unsolicited commercial email) phenomenon’ estimates that Internet subscribers worldwide are unwittingly paying €10 billion a year in connection costs just to receive junk e-mail. Yes, junk mail has become a great source of harassment to netizens the world over, including India.

India is the global leader in junk mails with a whopping 91 percent of all its electronic mail messages constituting spam, but ranks lowest in incidence of viruses, a media report said in Jerusalem.

Hong Kong ranks second on the global chart with 76.7 percent of junk mails followed closely by Israel with 70 percent of all messages being spam. ‘Ynetnews’ has reported this quoting the results of a research carried out by an Internet security company published in the electronic journal ‘Rid it Now’.

The country with the lowest amount of junk mail is Japan, where only 23.5 percent of messages received are unsolicited advertisements.

Findings of another report however found that India has the lowest frequency of e-mails affected by viruses with UAE being the most badly plagued with the nuisance, the portal reported. One in every 13.9 e-mail messages sent to residents of UAE has a virus attached to them. Singapore ranks second, with one in every 14.1 e-mails bearing a virus and India ranks lowest with only one in every 63.7 messages bearing a virus, the report said.