Ex-Eastender Dean Gaffney lends Yahoo a hand again junk e-mail

A poll of 1,000 computer users found that one in four had been fooled into opening unwanted messages believing them to be genuine.

On Thursday Yahoo launched a campaign to make people wary about what they open as part of a worldwide Dump The Junk Day, aimed at advising people never to reply to junk e-mails or forward them to friends.

John Webb, head of Yahoo Mail in the UK, said: "Our research shows that many British internet surfers don't have the knowledge to tackle junk mail effectively with over half of Britons actually helping to perpetuate the junk mail cycle."

Spam programmes

An estimated 40% of e-mails sent worldwide are junk, costing firms huge amounts of money in delays and lost production.

SPAM SURVEY 94% of Britons find junk mail hugely annoying 56% unwittingly reply to spam More than 25% had been fooled into opening spam Only 2% have made a purchase in response to junk mail Source: Yahoo survey

Yahoo found that spam has become one of the most irritating aspects of working life in the UK.

Junk e-mails ranked behind traffic jams and long working hours as causing stress for office workers.

But Yahoo found that many people are unknowingly making things worse by replying to the messages.

"Junk mail is effectively an intrusion of our privacy and one which many people lack the knowledge to protect themselves against," said Big Brother psychologist Professor Geoffrey Beattie.

"Whether the junk mail is coming into a personal or work e-mail inbox, unsurprisingly it leads to feelings of lacking control, frustration and anger."

Fighting spam

The big internet service providers (ISP) all offer "anti-spam" programmes to weed out the unwanted mail.

Last week Microsoft said that it now blocked 2.4 billion junk messages to its MSN and Hotmail subscribers every day.

And AOL - the world's largest ISP - is suing more than 12 individuals and companies who are allegedly responsible for sending one billion unsolicited messages.