“On average people spend a minute a day dealing with spam [or unsolicited commercial email] – in fact, this is quite a conservative estimate”, claims Advascan chief executive Roy Walker. “The staggering thing is that over the course of a year that minute adds up to half a day per person, or 25 days for an organisation of 50 people”.

With the problem of spam growing – and many items proving to be fairly unsavoury -, Advascan has compiled a ten-point plan to help small businesses cope.

Many of these measures are extremely basic, Walker explains. “Never, ever respond to spam”, for instance. “Click on the link that says ‘click here to unsubscribe’, and you’re just confirming that they’ve hit a live account”.

Other tips include making sure that the automatic response mode is switched off on your email browser, as this again is likely to trigger more unsolicited mailings, and switching off the preview window if you’re using outlook as this makes it easier to delete messages without opening them.