'Sex and drugs' spam deluge swamps schools

The UK's schools are being swamped with huge levels of spam email - far in excess of the national average - and children are being exposed to advertising for pornography, sex aids and prescription drugs.

The London Grid for Learning covers 2,600 London schools and more than 1.1 million pupils but according to spam filtering firm Email Systems, around 75 per cent of this important resource's bandwidth is being eaten away by spam and "a large proportion" of that has been reaching the children. At peak times, 95 per cent of the email traffic travelling over the system was spam.

Ahead of the new school year, the London Grid for Learning is trialling more advanced spam filters to limit the amount of spam that reaches children, particularly as much of it is highly offensive or illegal.

However, despite spam and child safety representing the coming together of two highly emotive subjects, it's unlikely the spammers are deliberately targeting children.

Neil Hammerton, managing director of spam filtering firm Email Systems, doubts school children are being targeted specifically by spammers but said they are an easy and vulnerable target and should be protected - especially because of the content of many spam emails.

"Schools have less budget than major companies to fight against the growing problem of spam," said Hammerton. "A lot of spammers base their charges on the number of delivered emails and unfortunately it is fairly easy to harvest email addresses for schools. Spammers can get hold of the email extension and easily generate combinations of names knowing there may be 1,000 people online at that address."